One Happy Memory
by David Brighton
Summary: Post-Season 6. Sansa Stark girds herself for confrontation as the north desperately prepares to fight a war against winter itself. The Brotherhood Without Banners arrives at Winterfell, bringing old faces and new challenges. Meanwhile, Petyr Baelish schemes, and Sansa must ask herself how far she will go to save what remains of her family.
1. The Stark in Winterfell

**A/N: This story uses details from both the books and the show, though it generally exists within show canon. While I found the method the showrunners used to bring Sansa to the North in Season 5 problematic, I think the position they left her in at the end of Season 6 is extremely interesting and worth exploring. This story is set directly after Season 6.  
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 **Wherever possible, character backgrounds spring from the books. Sandor Clegane's visit to Sansa Stark on the night of the Blackwater comes wholly from the books, and you will find other references to their book interactions as well.**

 **Reviews are cherished, and criticism is welcome.**

 **Many thanks to hardlyfatal, who consented to beta for this story. Her thoughtful comments have greatly improved it.**

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Chapter 1: The Stark in Winterfell

She would receive them with naked steel across her lap, for in her brother's absence she was the Stark in Winterfell. In truth, the sword was borrowed, and unlike Jon, she had no skill with blades to remedy matters if these men proved false. But the sword's owner stood just to her right, in easy snatching distance of the hilt. Sansa had no fear of the newcomers, in any case. All her fear was currently reserved for what lay north, and for Petyr Baelish; she had none to spare for strangers.

A band of forty men had been spotted at midday, riding hard for Winterfell. She hoped for an instant that Jon returned, but when she heard the riders flew no banners the idea died at once. Soon after, when Fostler begged her pardon and told her a red priest rode with them, she knew she would need a sword—for Ser Davos Seaworth's sake, if not for Jon's—and called for Brienne to attend her.

Now she sat, back straight and legs still, for Valyrian steel was famously sharp. She had no wish to cut either her skirts or her flesh. Brienne eyed her sidelong, and fondled her dagger restlessly with her left hand, keeping her right free for any potential trouble. Sansa frowned down at Oathkeeper on her knees. Its conspicuous red and gold offended her, but Ice could no more be restored than her father could. Both the sword and her father had been ruined long ago, and she had a duty now.

Sansa lifted her gaze from the steel in her lap and caught Fostler's eye at the back of the hall.

"Bring them in," she said.

The doors swung wide under the hands of two of the Vale guards, and four men stepped into the hall. They approached her two by two under the watchful eyes of Winterfell and Vale swordsmen, and as they grew close she realized that she recognized the first men. She had seen them a lifetime ago, at the Hand's Tourney in King's Landing.

The priest sported a red ringmail coat over his worn gear; it split at his neck and fell to his boots. His hair was drawn up in a high topknot, and he was fiercely bearded. He looked much thinner than he had when she had seen him last, and she noted that neither the sword on his back nor the one at his hip appeared to be on fire at the moment.

His companion was even more changed. Beric Dondarrion wore an eyepatch, and was so scarred that Sansa doubted her friend Jeyne Poole would still find him handsome, were she present.

"Thoros of Myr. Lord Dondarrion."

They knelt before her, though their guards did not. One wore a bow and quiver, and seemed small, though perhaps that was only in comparison to his companion, who was a giant of a man. That one wore a studded leather jerkin, a helm, and a greatsword on his back.

"My Lady of Winterfell," said Dondarrion.

"Lady Stark. The honor is ours," said the priest.

They had not called her Lannister or Bolton, at least. She lifted her hand to indicate they should rise. "We have little love for your red god, here," she said, eyeing Thoros of Myr. "What do you want?"

The two glanced at each other, and she knew that they had hoped to meet Jon, not her. Her anger rose and she raised her right hand from her lap, deliberately curling her fingers around the hilt of the sword on her knees. Around the room, her men's hands grasped hilts.

"The King in the North loves you less than I do," she told them. "And Ser Davos Seaworth less than that. Be glad it's me you face; I will hear you, for the life your god gave back to my brother. Tell me what you want, or go."

Thoros merely watched her. Sansa held his gaze, and did not break it when Dondarrion began to speak.

"The Long Night is here," he said simply. "A great storm comes from the north. We wish to help."

"Melisandre of Asshai helped." She ignored Dondarrion and spoke directly to the priest. "She killed innocent men with blood magic. She told Stannis her visions, and smashed his army to pieces. Thousands of men dead, who could have been here now, ready to fight what is coming. She burned men alive—she burned an innocent child. And Stannis still died. Is this the kind of help you offer?"

"I am not Melisandre," said Thoros, "of Asshai." They stared at each other until Sansa had nearly decided to confine them until Jon's return.

Then the guard behind Dondarrion removed his helm, tucked it under his arm, and stepped forward. He shook the hair out of his scarred face.

"These fools don't burn people," he said with contempt. "They hang them."

Sansa knew that rasping voice. She tore her gaze from Thoros of Myr, but Sandor Clegane was not looking at her; he was scowling at Beric Dondarrion. "I still say it's better than they deserve."

Beside her, Brienne tensed, and murmurs flew around the room.

"They've been prancing around the Riverlands for ages, stealing from the Lannisters and the Freys. And from me," he spat, giving Dondarrion another filthy look. "They give it all to the smallfolk, like they think they're in a bloody song."

"They're fools." He shrugged. "But I've met worse."

"Sandor Clegane," she said. He finally raised his eyes to hers, and her hand clutched the hilt of the sword. The last time she had seen him, he had held a knife to her throat and forced her to sing. He also offered to save her, but she declined, sure that Stannis would prevail and she would be safe. When that dream died, and each day in King's Landing seemed to bring a new horror, she often wondered if she would have been better off with the Hound. As much as he seemed to relish terrifying her, he never actually harmed her. He was strong, and ferocious, and he might have gotten her away safely. He might also have gotten them both killed.

"Lady Stark," said Sandor Clegane, and she was almost surprised he didn't call her 'little bird,' as he used to. She wondered if it had occurred to him.

The burned half of his face was more hideous than she remembered, and his armor not as fine as it once was, but otherwise he was much the same. She studied him, her face frozen in a smooth mask of courtesy, until he could not seem to stand her gaze; his eyes slid from her and settled upon Sansa's guardian. To Brienne he gave a look so evil that the woman took a half a step toward him, her armor creaking. Then she seemed to remember herself, and froze upon the step. Sansa could almost feel her sworn shield vibrating, like an arrow ready to fly.

"I am glad to see you well," she said finally. "I owe you a debt, and mean to make it good before you leave." She glanced at the others.

A grimace was etched on Beric Dondarrion's face, but Thoros of Myr's was smooth and expressionless, though he watched her closely.

"The hospitality of Winterfell is yours," she said to them. She stood, and handed Oathkeeper to Brienne, who did not seem to know whether to put up the sword or kill someone with it. "Be welcome here, and bring your men inside. We will share bread and salt, and find you rooms. You may rest in Winterfell until Jon returns."

She strode out the back of the hall, Brienne dogging her heels. She would return and feast the Brotherhood Without Banners, as duty demanded, but first she wished to be certain her poise was fully recovered, and for that she needed solitude and time to think.

Sansa was grateful that Littlefinger had not been present for the interview, for she did not know what her face might have shown. She only knew that if she had inadvertently revealed anything of her inner thoughts, he was the last person she would want to know of it.

She had thought that she had no fear left, that the Others had claimed the greatest part of it. Her worry for what Littlefinger might be—must be—planning for Jon accounted for most of the rest. And she even reserved some for herself, and what she might suffer at Lord Baelish's hands. But she had been wrong; forty new swords stood between her and the Night King, yet she was more afraid than ever before.


	2. The Walker on the Walls

Chapter 2: The Walker on the Walls

The wind was a fickle thing on the battlements. Some nights it was calm, only trailing its cold fingers along her cheeks and lifting the wisps of hair that escaped her heavy braid. Other times it pulled at her cloak steadily, until she had to clutch the heavy fabric around herself to keep from freezing. Tonight it rose and fell, one moment still and the next so strong she staggered. It was a mean wind, spitting tiny ice crystals into her face and wishing to catch her off guard and tumble her from the walls.

The Great Hall had been hot and close, warm from the heat of hundreds of bodies packed together on the benches. Two months ago, Jon had led a large force to the Dreadfort to retrieve the women and children the Boltons had removed from Winterfell. He met little resistance, and allowed the lowest Bolton soldiers, those with young families, to bend the knee. Some few he executed, leaders mostly, but the largest swath of the remaining Bolton fighters were allowed to choose either Longclaw or the black. The ranks of the Night's watch swelled, and when Jon stripped the Dreadfort bare to the stones, so did Winterfell's larders.

The winter town was filling too, as the smallfolk of several houses crept close to huddle against Winterfell's walls. Sansa was too young to remember much of the last winter, but she knew her father had filled the Great Hall every night with a different group, so that each person had a full meal every few days. She was the Lady of Winterfell now, and knew her duty.

So she had stifled in the Great Hall, seated at the high table with Brienne on her right, and Lord Baelish at her left. She would rather have been seated with the two maesters, though they were strangers to her, or with Lady Lyanna Mormont. Thirty-one fighters from Bear Island still lived, and Jon honored them above all others. He would keep them at Winterfell, he told her, and they would not face the Night King's dead armies unless all was already lost. They sat at the front of the hall, close to the high table, where Lady Lyanna could watch over them, and they her.

It had been dark, despite the torches and candles, so dark she could not see the men at the far end of the hall. She had told the steward to place the Brotherhood there, for she found she did not want to look at them. Forty men, threadbare, thin and dirty. She knew what they would look like, she had seen it many times in recent months: starved creatures devouring a meal as though it was their last.

"Seat them at the back," she'd said. "And find Fostler. They'll need rooms."

"Yes, Lady Sansa," said the steward.

"One thing more," she said, and he turned back to her. "Have him give Sandor Clegane a chamber in the keep. The best one he can find—warm enough that he doesn't have to light a fire." It would look strange if she plucked him alone from his companions, so she added, "Lord Beric and Thoros, as well. Tell the Lightning Lord I will speak to him in the morning."

The steward bowed, asked no questions, and left her.

In the heat and the dark she'd felt Littlefinger loom beside her, though she was taller than he was. His voice crept into her ear and his words were quick and clever; she smiled at his quips and made conversation, not wanting to please him but unable to do otherwise. He was Petyr tonight, kind and amusing, but she could not forget that inside him, Littlefinger always lurked. Sansa had to force herself not to lean away from him, and after an hour her muscles ached with tension. The unspoken threat he posed to Jon kept her from rebuffing him harshly, yet she did not dare encourage him. She walked a tightrope in his presence, and it was exhausting.

But on the battlements, the air was cold, and she was alone. She walked and let the wind scrape her face with its ice until she could hardly feel her feet in her boots.

When she descended, the keep was quiet, and Brienne waited for her. The woman was silent and morose, but this was nothing unusual. Brienne was not much of a talker, and Sansa considered that one of her best qualities, apart from her strength, her loyalty, and her striking blue eyes.

Sansa was chilled through and her muscles were stiff. She thought of the godswood and its hot pools, but there lay risk. Littlefinger had accosted her there once, after the battle for Winterfell, and she had avoided the place since. _I could hate him for that alone._

Drawing herself up, she decided she would not let fear of Littlefinger rule her, not tonight. She would take Brienne with her and choose a pool deep under the thick canopy, out of sight of the walls. The thought of Littlefinger watching her as she slipped into hot water in the deep of night was disquieting, but if he did sniff around, Brienne was more than capable of chasing him off.

The ground was never quite frozen in the godswood. As she walked between the tall sentinel trees, the wind and the night sky disappeared under the needles. She could smell the sweet decay of fallen autumn leaves and dead wood. Just being in this place—this Stark place—soothed her a fraction.

When she found a pool she judged sufficiently secluded, she removed her cloak and placed it well away from the muddy edge of the pool. Brienne helped her with her dress silently, and turned her back to give privacy. She smiled at her protector's concern for her modesty; Sansa still wore smallclothes, and bare breasts should have been nothing unusual, not to a woman. But she loved Brienne a little better for it all the same.

The mud was merely warm, but her feet were so cold it burned between her toes at first. She eased into the smoking water slowly, and sank down until it lapped over her shoulders. She huddled near the edge, her arms wrapped around her knees, and closed her eyes as the water warmed her. As she relaxed, her thoughts fell away from her, until at last she was only a beating heart, floating in the warm and the dark and the wet.

"My lady…" Brienne's voice brought her back, a long time later.

She opened her eyes. The broad back still faced her, though the head was turned a bit; Sansa could see the dim glow of one pale cheek.

"I must tell you something."

Sansa listened, but the silence stretched out while Brienne struggled to find her words.

"I told you your sister was with a man. That he didn't hurt her, and that they didn't want to part from each other. You remember?"

"I remember."

"I thought if I told you who it was, you would… I didn't want to scare you, more than you already were." She sounded miserable. "But you said you owed him a debt, and now..."

Sansa blew at the smooth surface of the water, watching the tiny ripples her breath made. "It was the Hound," she finished, since Brienne did not seem to be able to say it.

Sandor Clegane had served her, in his rough way. It did not surprise her that he would have served her sister as well, given the chance. Sansa remembered wishing for his presence several times after she fled King's Landing; when she was frightened, her thoughts often seemed to turn to him. She found she was glad for her sister, that Arya had had him to protect her, and hugged her knees tighter.

"Yes. But that's not all. When I found them, I spoke of the vow I made to your lady mother, but the Hound saw the sword Jaime gave me. He said he'd been looking at Lannister gold all his life, and did not trust me. He said there was no safe place to take her, and Arya refused to go with me."

"I refused as well, if you recall. You know how stubborn Stark women are. I don't see any reason to blame yourself."

"There is, though, my lady. We fought, and I… I killed him. Or I thought I did. I looked for Arya for days, but she must have hidden from me. If I'd explained better... if only I could have convinced him that Jaime… she'd be here with you, and safe. But I didn't. I failed you, my lady. I beg forgiveness. Send me out again, to look for her; I'll search until the end of my days. Or send me to the Wall, if you wish. I'll fight for you there, and die if that's what the gods want. I'll do whatever you say."

"You beg forgiveness for the crime of being unable to convince the Hound of your sincerity?" Sansa laughed, the first one to come out of her since Jon had ridden to finish House Umber for good and strip Last Hearth. "I imagine every man and woman alive to be guilty of that charge, Lady Brienne."

She stood, dripping. Steam rose from her skin in the cold night air.

"My sister is alive and well, or she is not. You've done nothing that needs forgiving," she said, putting an end to it. "Now help me with my dress."

* * *

When she opened her shutters in the morning the sky was a bright, hard blue. In its honor she chose to wear her blue dress, though it was a deep midnight and not sky-colored. A direwolf raced across her breast, stitched in silver thread, seed pearls, and bits of mother-of-pearl by her own hand.

Sansa brushed her auburn hair until it shone, and left it loose, except for two small braids brought back from her brow to keep the hair out of her face.

Her maid brought food, and after she broke her fast she felt ready to speak to Beric Dondarrion. Brienne would be beating Podrick Payne around the yard at this hour, but Sansa didn't need her for this.

The steward told her Thoros of Myr had just fetched food for himself and Lord Beric, and that he expected they were still within. He escorted her to Dondarrion's chamber and left her at the door. Sansa knew how busy he was with all the activity in Winterfell, and did not begrudge him his hurried manner.

At her knock, a voice called for her to enter. Inside the room she found Thoros and Lord Beric seated before a roaring fire. They ate same fare she had earlier—eggs and black bread smeared with butter—and shared a rasher of bacon set upon the table between them.

They stood when they saw her, and greeted her courteously. Thoros of Myr offered her his chair, and took his eggs and bread to the floor near the fireplace. She wondered if he meant to send a message with his choice of seat. If he thought humbling himself before her would make her look more kindly upon him, or trust him, he was mistaken. She noticed he sat with his back to the wall, where he could see both her and the fire.

"I trust your rooms are comfortable," she began.

"They are, my lady," Beric said. "We thank you, though we did not come for comfort."

"What would you have of me, then?"

"Give us leave to ride to the Wall at once. Time grows short."

She chose to misunderstand him. "So you mean to take the black, then?" she asked lightly.

"We do not seek it, but we will if needs be," said Lord Beric, surprising her.

"Truly?" Sansa sat back in her chair, discomfited. "All of you?"

"Every one," he agreed, and took up his bread.

The two before her she could see taking the black well enough, but when she tried to imagine Sandor Clegane kneeling in a sept to swear the vows her imagination completely failed her. She knew what the man thought of vows. "I doubt the king will require it," she said at last. "You'll get your wish to go to the Wall, but not until Jon does."

"And when will that be?"

Sansa hesitated, but Jon's whereabouts and plans were no real secret. "Soon. He should arrive here from Last Hearth any day. He scourged the Dreadfort, left its gates open and brought the smallfolk south. He means to do the same for Last Hearth. Stannis planned to man the Wall again, and Jon continues that work."

Thoros stared into the flames, his meal forgotten. Beric's eye was drawn to the fire as well, and she watched them watching it, unsettled. She wondered what they saw, but did not ask.

"It may be some days, though."

When they did not respond, Sansa exhaled through her nose. "Your armor is shit, my lords." They both started and swung their heads around to look at her. She reached across the table and fingered the fraying sleeve of Lord Beric's coat. "And in this you will freeze to death long before you reach the Wall."

She rose from the chair. "Winterfell has more armor than bodies to fill it. Winter gear, too. I give leave for you and your men to take what they wish from our stores. Jon will speak to you when he returns."

Lord Beric stood as she turned to go, but Thoros remained on the floor.

Sansa had her hand on the latch when his voice reached out to her with its strange accent. "Your sister traveled with us for a time, Lady Sansa. We meant to bring her to your mother—"

"Half the people in Winterfell have seen my sister," she said. "And all of them more recently than you. Do not trouble yourselves."

She glanced back at them; they both wore faint smiles. "He will want your swords," she warned them. "But if you expect he will want your counsel, think again."

"Then he shall have only our swords," said Beric Dondarrion, and bowed. Sansa nodded and left them.

* * *

The meeting had agitated her, and the rest of the morning passed with Sansa unable to keep her hand to any task. When she took up an embroidery hoop and the needle, her mind's eye saw the slender sword Jon had gifted Arya. She wondered where it was. Slung through her sister's belt loop, tapping against a horse's saddle blanket as she rode? Sansa hoped so, yet she also saw the slim hilt of the blade upon a forest floor, a few inches from a small limp hand. She saw the fingers curled upward, black and rotting.

Sansa set aside her sewing.

A book was no relief either. The ink seemed to run together and she could make no sense of the words. Brienne was in the room, but was honing a dagger with such single-mindedness that Sansa felt safe in allowing herself to slump in the chair and bend her head.

How she longed to see Arya, and grieved that they had been on such poor terms when they parted. If she spent the rest of her days wondering whether her dead sister had hated her it was no better than she deserved. She had refused to tell the truth before King Robert, and had paid for that lie with her wolf's life. Worse, she had blamed Arya for it, when the fault had been hers alone.

 _Lady…_

A few bitter tears scorched her cheeks. She might never be able to embrace Arya and confess what a little fool she had been, but perhaps she could find out if her sister had spoken of her. There was someone at Winterfell who had traveled with her, and he would not lie to her.

Sansa wiped the tears from her face and straightened.

She dismissed Brienne and set out to look for the steward, alone. He was often in the kitchens at this hour, and she found him there, arguing with a cook and looking much overcome with his duties. She took pity on him and only asked where the castellan had put Sandor Clegane. Of the cook she demanded a flagon of summer ale and a metal bowl filled with crusty bread and chicken stew. She had no appetite herself.

The chamber was a fine one on the ground floor of the keep, the level which most enjoyed the hot spring water piped through the walls. She rapped her knuckles on the door and slipped inside the room without waiting for an answer, not wishing to be seen by anyone chancing by.

She found him in a rectangle of sunlight, half risen from the stone floor with his sword in his hand. When he saw her, he froze. She locked the door, and when she faced him again he was sitting cross-legged in the sun, the sword balanced on his knees. She hadn't heard him move, but he was not wearing mail for the first time in her presence. She wondered how much of her memory of the man was the sound of his armor creaking and the metal clinking, that the silence of him would be so odd to her.

"You're supposed to be the Stark girl with manners. Why knock if you're just going to enter?" he said to her. His voice was as brusque as ever, and she smiled.

"These are strange days," she said. "Sandor Clegane scolds me for my lack of courtesy. Yet you receive me with naked steel on your knees."

There was a heavy round table between them matched with four stout wooden chairs, and there she divested herself of the metal bowl and flagon. The chair nearest him was draped with his tattered cloak, so dirty she could not tell what color it was meant to be. Sansa turned the chair toward him and sat.

The sword was no longer in his lap. He turned it this way and that in the sunlight from the window, squinting at it. Sansa was no warrior, but she knew that a sword with a notch the size of her thumbnail did not require such careful scrutiny. If he did not wish to look at her, that was his choice. She would not chide him for it, even though he had raged at her in the past for averting her gaze from his burned face.

There was no fire in his hearth, but the room was still warm even with the shutters wide open, which pleased her. The chamber was large—in truth it was a suite, with several rooms—and she saw that he had laid out all of his armor and weapons in neat rows on the floor. It was all poor stuff, and she hoped he hadn't put too much effort into it, since she planned to replace it all.

Clegane wore a wrinkled brown tunic and trousers, both threadbare and fraying at the hems. One of the rooms here was especially for bathing, and the wrinkles made her suspect he had simply scrubbed his clothing in the stone tub and hung it up to dry overnight. The collar of the shirt was loose, and there was a white scar where his neck met his shoulder. It looked like a bite mark. Dark hairs grew thick down his neck and toward his chest, marching over his collarbone and down below, where she could not see.

"You come here to stare at me all day?" he said. "Or is it to pay some debt you think you owe me?"

He was looking at her now. The light from the window fell across his eyes, giving them the illusion of warmth.

"Not today," she said.

"What then?"

"You were the last person to travel with my sister. I haven't seen her since Father died." There were cups on the table, and she poured ale for both of them. "I hoped you might tell me of her."

His mouth twitched and he set the sword aside. "Your sister," he said, rising from the floor, "was the death of me." He crossed the room on bare feet and sat in the chair next to her, leaning back and stretching his long legs out as he took up the cup of ale she offered him. He sipped it.

"That's good," he said, and drank again.

"I took her from the Brotherhood, before the Red Wedding. Meant to ransom her at the Twins, maybe find a place with your brother. You know how that went." He raised the cup to his mouth and drained it, his eyes on hers even as his head tilted back.

She did know, and drank from her own cup. He was right: the ale was very good, crisp with a hint of lemon.

"The first morning after I took her, she came at me with a big rock when she thought I was sleeping. Meant to smash my head in." He took the flagon, poured again. "Thought I was taking her back to King's Landing." He snorted.

"I set her straight, and after that she didn't try again. Just promised me she would put a sword through my eye, and made sure to say my name every night when she went through that list of hers." He looked beyond her. There was a beautiful tapestry on the wall behind her, but she knew he did not see it. "She forgot sometimes, though."

"List?"

"That sister of yours." The good half of his mouth curled up in a smile. "A sweet girl, with murder in her heart. Had a whole list of people she meant to kill, had to recite it every night, she said, or she couldn't sleep. Joffrey, Cersei, Ilyn Payne. My brother the Mountain."

Sansa felt cold.

"The Tickler. Beric Dondarrion, Thoros of Myr. The Red Woman—that's your Melisandre. And me: the Hound." He drank again from the cup.

She drew her composure around her and forced her fingers to relax around the cup. "Was I on it?"

He looked at her, startled.

"No, little bird, you weren't on it. What could you ever have done to her, that she would do that?" His voice echoed in her head from the past: _A hound will die for you, but never lie to you. And he'll look you straight in the face._ He was looking in her face now, and she believed him.

Sansa closed her eyes and let the rest of the ale slide down her throat.

"What did Beric and Thoros do?" She tilted the mouth of the empty cup toward him.

"Don't know. Didn't ask her." He obliged her, pouring a stream of amber liquid into her cup. "She wouldn't have told me anyway. She was that ferocious by the time she met them, might have put them on for looking at her wrong."

"What happened after the Red Wedding?" It surprised her how much it still hurt to say those two words.

"We were right there. If we had been a day earlier your sister would have died with the rest. Got out, not too clean, but not bad. Then I took her to the Vale. Thought Lysa Arryn might want her, but she'd just died. You should have heard your sister laugh."

"I was at the Eyrie then," she said slowly.

"Didn't know. Heard you killed Joffrey and flew away, leaving the Imp to take the fall." He was still looking at her, and had been for a while. Sansa said nothing. She didn't want to speak of Joffrey, or Tyrion, or Littlefinger.

"After that, I didn't know what to do with her. She wanted to go to the Wall, to her brother. I told her no. The cold would have done for us even if we made it through the fighting. Was rethinking it when we met Brienne of fucking Tarth. Your big bitch bit off my ear." He shoved the thin hair away so she could see.

Sansa looked politely, as she knew he wanted, and waited for him to go on. There was only a hole there, but it did not distress her as it once would have, and Clegane himself seemed more annoyed than murderous.

"Your sister hid from her. I told her to go after her, but she wouldn't." He scowled. "I begged her for mercy, and she wouldn't do that either. She took our coin and left me to die. That's the last I saw of her."

He sat up and pulled the bowl to him, then looked at her. "You hungry?"

Sansa shook her head. He began to eat, and she saw he did it the same way Jon did, quickly, and with little regard for how he went about it. "Do you know where she went?"

"No," he said between bites. "Saltpans, maybe. You can get ships there sometimes."

"There was a massacre at Saltpans. Someone burned and pillaged and murdered. They wore your helm."

"Wasn't me," he said. "I was busy dying."

"I know it wasn't you," she said, her temper flaring. He heard it in her voice and looked up from his stew. "You're so ready for me to think you some kind of monster. Don't think I don't know better."

"You don't," he said. The look he gave her was dark and unfriendly. "You don't know what I've done. What I am. That's your own fault, I've told you often enough."

"You're a killer, I know." She laughed bitterly. "If that makes you a monster, what does it make me?"

The unfriendly look was gone, and she saw uncertainty in its place.

"Not Joffrey. That was Littlefinger, and Olenna Tyrell."

"Who, then?"

"My husband." she said, and watched his brows draw together. "Not Tyrion, either. Tyrion never hurt me. He never even touched me. Nobody hurt me, or touched me, until I came to Winterfell."

"Who?" he rasped. The hand holding the fork was clenched into a fist.

"Ramsay Bolton. I agreed to marry him, thinking I could get revenge. I was a fool. And he was a monster." The nightmares from it still woke her. Sometimes she was back in his bed, screaming as he raped her. Sometimes he cut her, and sometimes he murdered her. The worst were the ones where she murdered him, though. She stabbed and stabbed, sobbing, yet he did not die. Ramsay laughed and bled and called her his sweet wife, and said her heart was the twin of his.

"When we took Winterfell back, Jon would have killed him with his bare hands, if he hadn't seen me standing there. He'd told Jon he would make him watch his soldiers take turns raping me, then spoon the eyes from him and let the dogs do the rest. After Jon was done with him, I had them tie him in the kennels, still alive. He hadn't fed his hounds in days, and I let them do the rest. He died screaming." Sansa would hear his agonized cries for the rest of her life.

"And you were right. It was the sweetest moment of my life."

Sansa suddenly remembered where she was, and who she was with. She hadn't meant to tell him all that. She raised her eyes to his face, but it was a mask and his gaze was unreadable.

"So what does that make me? A killer, same as you," she said. Sansa gathered her skirts and stood, wanting nothing more than to get out from under his gaze. His look made her feel as though her shame and guilt were laid bare for the whole world to see.

Clegane stood when she did, and she had forgotten how tall he was in the years since she had seen him. He towered over her, but she was a woman grown, and no longer feared him.

"I tried a different way, once," he said. "The septon who found me dying had been a soldier with a bad master, just like me. After he nursed me back from death, I joined his flock. I thought I could give up my sword and live in peace."

She knew he had not found that peace, or he would not be in the north, within Winterfell's walls. "What happened?"

"We found a place, in a sheltered valley. I was helping build the sept. One day I was chopping firewood in the forest, and when I came back some renegades from the Brotherhood had killed them, every one. Men, women, and children alike. They hanged my friend from the rafters of his own half-finished sept."

"What did you do?"

"What do you think I did, girl? I found them and I killed them. Ask me if I regret it." Sansa knew he didn't. He was not offering her absolution with his story, but understanding.

"That's how I fell in with the Brotherhood. They were hanging the last three. Let me have two of them, out of respect for my loss, they said."

"And then you came here."

"Aye. Then I came here. Couldn't be Joffrey's dog, but I couldn't give the sword up either. Dondarrion says I'm a warrior, that's what I was made to do. I don't know if he's right, if there's a middle way. Could be I'll ride north just to die."

"I'd prefer you didn't," she said dryly.

He laughed at her. "I'll try not to, little bird." The laughter soon faded, and his eyes moved over her face. "I should have taken you, the night of the Blackwater." His voice was low and serious, and her heart began to beat a little faster. "The way I took your sister from the Twins."

"Why didn't you?" Sansa's voice sounded queer and flat in her ears. She had thought about that night many times, never able to fully grasp what happened between them.

"Thought you deserved a choice. You never got to make any of your own. I know what that's like. But I shouldn't have left it up to you, you were just a child." She saw something in his face that she had seen before, but had been too young to understand. "You're not, anymore."

"No, I'm not," she agreed.

The Hound hadn't really kissed her the night the Blackwater burned, but she'd been kissed enough since to know he was moments away from doing it now. Her heart hammered in her chest and she wondered if he could see her pulse pounding in her throat, betraying her. She wondered if she would let him. Then it occurred to her that it might not be a matter of letting or not letting; she was not strong enough to stop him if he meant to do it.

But Sansa had been wrong. He made no move toward her, only watched her until the moment spun out and faded.

When she began to feel a little foolish, she said, "I must go. I'll see you again before you ride north."

"As you will," was his only reply.


	3. Under the Weirwood Tree

Chapter 3: Under the Weirwood Tree

The light was failing fast when the shout went up. The thick needle's glint had faded to the occasional gleam, and Sansa's fingers were sore. She rolled her aching neck from side to side and suspected her legs were asleep. Normally she prefered to work in the solar, but the cloak was far too large and complex for her to manage anywhere but the floor of the main chamber.

Brienne crossed to the window, careful to avoid the sleek furs, and peered below.

"Is it Jon?" Sansa asked.

"I can't see yet, my lady." A whoop came from the courtyard and Sansa heard the hooves of many horses clatter across the stones. Men called to each other, their gear jingling as they rode. "They're being very loud."

She smiled at Brienne's disapproval and pushed the needle through the heavy brown cloth once more. She was glad to end this session on an easy stitch, one where she didn't have to pick through the silky marten's fur with additional, finer needles to ensure none of it would be bowed and crushed under the thread.

"Yes, it's him," Brienne said. "I see him."

"Let's go down, then," Sansa said, setting aside her work. She stood and locked her hands high above her head for a long stretch, squeezing her eyes she opened them the Maid of Tarth was staring down at the nearly finished cloak on the floor.

Sansa followed her gaze, tracing the entire piece with critical eyes. The dun thread showed even better than she had hoped against the dark brown cloth. She had decided that trimming the cloak with fur was not enough, and swept the whole inside of the thing with sable, the better to keep him warm. This meant wedding the furs to the cloth with many stitches. She could have done it plainly and saved many hours, but the part of her that loved beautiful clothing won out.

The hardest part—the hood—was done, and the thickest embroidery as well, across the shoulders where a dozen dogs twined together and played. She had made the borders simple vines and tree branches that reached toward the middle, guessing that he would not care for flowers.

"It's beautiful, my lady." Brienne's voice was quiet. "I could never make such a thing; I was never much good at embroidery."

"You have other, more valuable gifts," she said gently.

"I suppose." The big woman's shoulders hunched as if Sansa had struck her, and she continued to brood over the cloak. "Why make this for him, though? I don't understand." She asked the question as though she didn't really want to hear the answer. "Is it because of Arya?"

"For my sister," Sansa agreed. "And for me." Her eyes sought the little bird she had perched on one of the lower branches, its head tilted up toward the hounds. "He saved my life in King's Landing, during a riot. The mob meant to... dishonor me. But he came back for me. Saved me and carried me to safety. Then he went back into the fray for his horse."

She laughed, remembering.

"His horse?"

"Yes. He called it Stranger."

"Stranger." Brienne sounded unsettled. "What did the horse look like?"

"It was a heavy courser. A beautiful creature, black as night. Why?"

"My lady," Brienne said slowly. "This is very odd. I think we may have his horse in the stables."

"What? How is that possible?"

"Podrick lost our horses the night before we met Arya and Clegane near the Bloody Gate. And after the fight… we needed mounts, and took their two. I rode the black. It's an evil-tempered thing, my lady."

"I remember," Sansa said, surprised she hadn't recognized it. "It bit you twice on the way to the Wall."

"Yes. And every ride a challenge. I've been riding another since we came here."

"Well, he may be pleased to be reunited with his master. As for the master… he'll need a good horse, where he's going."

Sansa looked down again at the cloak. Cold alone killed many men during the winter years. Perhaps its warmth would save his life and her debt would be repaid. _Foolish girl,_ she scolded herself. _It can't save him—it's only a cloak. Don't make it more than it is just because you have nothing else to offer._

"Let's go greet my brother," she said. "I've missed his long face."

* * *

The Great Hall was as warm and dark as ever, but with Jon at her side instead of Petyr it seemed welcoming and merry. The kitchens put on a true feast in honor of their king's return. They started with carrot and butternut squash soup, sweetened with maple sugar and chunks of sweet yams. Two hundred chickens came after, roasted on beds of sliced onions and painted with walnut oil, and mounds of potatoes soon joined them, mashed with their skins in roasted garlic and butter and salt.

The steward had broken open five casks of ale, though he had presented Sansa with a carafe of Arbor gold, some of the last they had in storage. The Great Hall rumbled even more loudly than usual, and everywhere Sansa looked she saw smiling faces.

When the kidney pies arrived, Jon shared a glance with her, and she knew their thoughts were the same. Sansa was nearly full, but she lifted her fork bravely.

She swallowed a bite, and her brother waited for the verdict. "Not as good as Old Nan's," she pronounced, and shook her head.

Jon laughed, and leaned over to hug her and kiss her hair. Her gladness swelled within her, and the memory of how he was before the Battle for Winterfell faded a little more. He had hardly seemed to care whether he lived or died, and had been half a ghost already, defeated before he even tried.

But now he laughed, and so did she.

"To Old Nan," said Jon, and raised his cup. "No one ever made a better kidney pie—"

"—or told a story less suitable for a child's ears," finished Sansa.

They both drank. She couldn't seem to stop smiling, and suspected the wine was going to her head. She slipped the rest of the pie under the table for Ghost to enjoy.

"You're going to spoil him," Jon said.

"Someone has to," she said. She felt the old pang for Lady, but knowing Jon still had his direwolf made her feel better, somehow, instead of worse. "How was Last Hearth?"

"Satisfying," he grunted. "They heard how we dealt with the Dreadfort. Some meant to run, but their fellows fought them. A few escaped, but not enough to trouble us. The loyal ones came boiling out of the keep with the runners trussed like chickens. Said the Greatjon must have been spinning in his grave after what the Smalljon did to Rickon." He shoved a large forkful of pie into his mouth and chewed for a while. "They loved him; he was loyal to us. And I scourged his house."

Sansa laid her hand on his arm. "He would have respected you for it, Jon."

"I doubt it. I plan to raise Tormund Giantsbane in his place."

Her shout of laughter rang out like a bell, and many on the benches roared back at her and lifted their cups. She raised her own in return, and drank again.

"What is it?" asked Jon, grinning.

"If you make him the Lord of Last Hearth, he'll be an eligible match for Brienne. She'll be absolutely appalled."

"Ah, he means no harm," Jon said, smiling. "Bit rough around the edges, that's all. You know he truly admires her? Wildling men like a strong woman. If she can beat him in a fight, even better."

Wildling women liked strong men as well, she knew. And they didn't mind scars. Perhaps if they all lived, the Hound might take a wildling woman to wife. Most of his problem was that he hadn't ever been loved, she suspected, and she could certainly imagine him sneaking through a woman's window, intent on stealing her.

"While you were gone, the Brotherhood without Banners came up from the Riverlands," she said. "They have a red priest with them." At his look, she added, "I told them not to expect to advise you. They said they don't care, they only want to fight the Night King. They'll follow you to the Wall when you go, if you'll allow it."

Jon nodded. "How many?"

"Forty. And Sandor Clegane is with them. He used to be Joffrey's sworn shield. Did you meet him when they came to Winterfell?" _Before everything went wrong._

"Saw him. Heard some stories—not good ones."

"He saved my life in King's Landing," she said. "Then he tried to take me from the city and bring me to Robb and Mother, when Stannis attacked, though I refused. I trust him. But… Jon, he traveled with Arya. He saved her life too, more than once, I think."

At that Jon twisted in his seat to look at her. "How was she?" He'd already heard that she had been seen alive from Brienne, but Arya had always been Jon's favorite sister. Sansa didn't blame him; she'd never been close to Jon until she sought him at the Wall. He was even more eager than she'd been to hear details of Winterfell's youngest daughter.

She repeated everything Clegane had told her, and the telling lasted until the servers began to thread through the crowd with dessert. One placed a dish of apple tart before her, still bubbling from the oven, dusted with sugar and nuts.

"I couldn't find you any lemons," Jon told her. "I tried, but they're not to be had at any price."

"It's all right. These days lemon bars taste like King's Landing." _And the Vale._ She leaned over and kissed his cheek. Arya might have been his favorite sister, but he loved Sansa too, and she was grateful.

* * *

Lady's bones were interred in the lichyard, and it was there he found her, much later that night. Sansa heard his step and half-turned, not knowing who it would be. When she saw, she inclined her head in greeting and resumed the study of her direwolf's grave.

"It was a fine thing to hear your laugh tonight, my love. You're much too solemn these days."

"There's been little enough to laugh over, Lord Baelish."

"True. Though standing in a graveyard surely won't help matters. Will you walk with me?"

Sansa extended her arm, still gazing at the headstone. Underneath the name, the stonemason had carved a maid resting in a field with a huge wolf in her lap. Her father must have sent the order, and the old griefs rose up inside her. Petyr's arm slid through hers, and the urge struck to dig into the soil and claim a bone from the grave. The wild, morbid impulse did not leave her for several seconds, and she wondered how Littlefinger would react if she suddenly gave in.

The idea made her smile briefly, but when it faded she felt the last of the wine inside her give up the ghost. She turned, and walked west.

"Let's walk in the godswood," she said. "It's warmer there." _And it's a Stark place. It will give me strength._

They walked, and he seemed content to be silent, at least until they enjoyed more privacy. They stopped under the weirwood tree, and Sansa looked up through its red leaves. Beyond them the night sky was clear and dark. It glittered with stars, but it looked cold and remote, and could not help her.

"You have not been happy with me, I know," he said. "Your efforts to hide it are commendable, but I know what it looks like when a woman is unhappy with a man. I only wish I could believe you hid it out of a wish to spare my feelings."

Sansa said nothing. A wind gusted above their heads, and the red leaves clattered and made a sound like laughter.

"Well, my feelings are more robust than that, as I think we both know. And even if they weren't, I have certainly earned having them hurt." Next to her, he bent his head and gazed at the forest floor.

"I hoped bringing the knights of the Vale would make up for my mistake, but I've come to realize over the last weeks that there's no possible way to make it good. I can't go back and undo it, or I would. I can't hurt him for you; he's now beyond any man's reach, even mine."

Out of the corner of her eye she saw his gaze follow hers, until they both gazed at the heavens.

"Beautiful. Though not half as beautiful as you." He looked at her again, and this time she met his gaze. Melancholy looked strange on his face, and she mistrusted him so badly that she could not believe he felt as sad as he looked.

"The only way I can serve you now is to leave," he said. "I loved your mother, as I love you. I do not intend to cause you further distress." His voice was gentle and sincere. "I plan to leave you a part of the Vale forces, for your protection, and take the rest to the Wall with your brother. I have heard a representative of the Iron Bank of Braavos has been in the north. He will be at the Wall again, if I am right. The king says he has secured food for the Night's Watch for the winter, and I may be of some use in striking a deal for the north, as well. After that… we will return to the Vale, as you wish, and won't trouble you again."

Sansa stared at him as realization dawned over her. _He does not believe in the Others._ She did not know whether she wanted to laugh at this fool, whose eyes were so focused on the south that he could not see what was behind him, or kill him for the same neglect that might take the warriors of the Vale from them, and doom them all.

 _Jon leaves the day after tomorrow._ The thought of Littlefinger at the Wall with her brother filled her with horror. The king's black brothers had murdered him just for letting a few wildlings through the Wall. Jon had hanged those who did the deed, but likely some remained who agreed with his killers. Of the rest, surely many of them felt that he had deserted when he left to retake Winterfell. Death and resurrection, even if they believed it, might mean little set against a vow meant to last until the end of a man's days.

Then there were the new brothers, Bolton and Umber soldiers, who hated Jon even before the Battle for Winterfell, and probably hated him twice as much after he forced them to take the black.

The ways a clever, ruthless man could hurt Jon at the Wall were so numerous that her stomach clenched. _If Littlefinger goes to the Wall, Jon will die._ _Petyr won't even have to dirty his hands._

 _I have to stop him_. She thought she might be the only person in the Seven Kingdoms who _could_ stop him. Hours spent worrying over the problem of Littlefinger had only left her with two viable options: kill him, or snare him. Killing him now would mean losing the knights of the Vale. She wished bitterly that Sweetrobin had not been too sickly to ride to Winterfell; she felt sure she could have bent the boy to her will. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, and her time had run out.

 _This is the moment. I must act now, or never._ As ill as the thought made her, she must try to bind him. If that didn't work, she would consider how to do the other.

"Petyr," she said, beginning with the truth. "You have told so many lies that when you speak to me, I don't know what to think, no matter how small the comment."

"I know," he said, watching her.

"But once you came to me under this very heart tree, and told me two things you wanted. Sometimes I think those were the only true things you ever said to me." She reached out and took his gloved hand in hers. "I know you hoped the north would raise me, and not Jon. I remember your words, 'half-brother' and the rest, hoping to set me against him. You told me yourself: the pieces don't always move as you like, and I know how clever you are. You probably have some other plans half-made already."

Sansa squeezed his hand and looked into his eyes. "That picture you told me of, I've thought on it long and hard. I'll give you the truth, for the truth you gave to me that day: I love my king—my brother—and will never set myself against him. I would be content to run this castle for the rest of my life, and never rule, as long as I can be with what remains of my family. I would be content to scrub the kennels, if I could have them safe and whole and beside me."

The truth of her own words and the relief of speaking them aloud left tears welling in her eyes. She blinked and let them fall. "I can't be the wife you hoped for, who can play the game of thrones at your side. I'm done with the game; it's cost me almost everyone I love. So you can't have both, Petyr. You just can't. I'm sorry for it."

"Sansa," he said. His free hand brushed at her cheek, his glove absorbing her tears. "I—"

"I believe you can take the Iron Throne if you wish it, Petyr. You're a man of great ability." She laughed. "I don't even know if you really love me as you say. I remember what you said to Lysa Arryn that day. But if you do..."

She took a step closer to him, and caught his other hand. "After Ramsay Bolton, the dreams I had for myself died. I never wished to marry again, never expected to find pleasure in its bed even if I did." She stepped closer still, and his eyes were intent on hers. "I know you wouldn't hurt me the way he did. Forswear the Iron Throne. Stay here with me, and I will marry you. Our children will rule Winterfell. Let that be enough, Petyr."

Sansa let his hands go, and cupped hers around his face. Stepping forward a third time, she kissed him.

The kiss was not one of the dutiful ones she had given him in the Vale, that he had teased her for. Her determination was too great. She parted her lips and when his tongue slipped into her mouth she answered with her own. His arms went around her, and he kissed her in earnest. _He tastes of mint, even here in the north._

They kissed for some time, under the heart tree. At first she felt nothing, but after a while, as his mouth moved against and within hers, something within her stirred. _For Petyr,_ she thought, and wondered at it. She feared him, and did not trust him, but she also admired him. Was that why? Or would her body respond to any man who touched her kindly? She thought of the Hound then, but he had never touched her, and never would.

Sansa broke their embrace, and pressed another kiss, full of promise, to the smooth skin just underneath his ear.

"You can marry me," she whispered there. "Or continue chasing the Iron Throne. I won't begrudge your choice either way. But if you harm my family pursuing a crown, make sure to murder me when you do it."

She pulled away from him then, and gave him a smile. "Or I will kill you."

Petyr Baelish laughed aloud, and smiled back at her. "Finally," he said, his voice full of delight. "That was a magnificent play, my love." Sansa saw the light in his eyes, half admiration and half lust. "I knew you would be a great player one day, though I admit I did not expect you to make your first move against me."

Littlefinger pulled her close to kiss her again, but she stopped him with a hand to his chest.

"It was my first move, and my last," she told him. "I meant what I said. Do not think to go to the Wall; I will not tolerate it. I will not marry you until this war is over and done, and my family is safe. I will never ride south again, or to the Vale; Winterfell is my home, and I will not leave it again, with a husband or otherwise." She studied his face, wondering if he believed her.

"Then we will never leave it, my dear," he said. He kissed her, and she could feel his mouth smiling against hers. She could taste his triumph, and the thought that he might have manipulated her into position and let her make the pawn's move wormed into her head, and would not leave.


	4. Three Kisses

Chapter 4: Three Kisses

When they were children, Sansa and her sister adopted vastly different approaches to dealing with unpleasant tasks. Arya had hated almost any lesson meant to teach her how to become a lady; she disliked music, hated comportment, and loathed sewing. She didn't object to painting screens, but Sansa knew that was only because of the chance to make a mess.

Arya's primary method of avoidance had been hiding, which rarely worked. Septa Mordane was a practiced hand at dragging the girl out of tight spots, and when a lesson was looming, the septa knew to keep a close eye on the youngest Stark daughter. Arya's secondary approach had been to do a poor job, which only earned her scoldings and meant she was made to sit there until she did it right. The septa was as stubborn as Arya, so jagged, clumsy stitches weren't effective either, but sometimes Robb or even Father would eventually come to free her, which only made matters worse, in Sansa's opinion.

Sansa herself had struggled with sums, but knew that someday she would run a great house, and mastering the skill was necessary. Instead of avoiding the matter, she pursued it with diligence, and spent extra hours studying the numbers until she truly understood them.

She wondered how Arya would have handled telling their brother that she was betrothed to a man she feared and did not trust. Her sister probably would have run away, or wouldn't have been foolish enough to enter into such an agreement in the first place. Tempting as it was to give Arya's method a try, she knew it was best to face the matter squarely. The men would be off in the morning, and Sansa did not intend to waste the last day she might ever see her brother avoiding him. Besides, she had been summoned.

Sansa sighed and knocked on the door. When it opened, a helmeted head peered at her. "The Lady Sansa," the guard announced.

When she entered the Small Hall she understood at once why this meeting had convened here, rather than in Jon's solar. There was a veritable crowd within: Jon, at the head of the table; Ser Davos Seaworth, Lady Lyanna Mormont, Tormund Giantsbane, Petyr, Bronze Yohn Royce, Lord Cerwyn, Sigorn the Magnar of Thenn and new Lord of Karhold, and several maesters.

Roose Bolton had been so fond of maesters that when he rode to Winterfell, he brought three of his own. Maester Wolkan had been so relieved to be freed of the Boltons that when he was brought to Jon, he had fallen to his knees and clutched his hand. He'd knelt in this very room and spilled every secret of Ramsay's that he knew of in a furious, outraged whisper. Afterward, he'd come to Sansa and begged her forgiveness for doing nothing to help her. She had assured him there was nothing to be done, but he still looked ashamed, and could not meet her eyes.

Jon kept him for Winterfell and sent the surplus to Castle Black, but the maester population just seemed to keep growing. A final Dreadfort maester had arrived with the Bolton smallfolk, and another rode with Jon from Last Hearth. The king seemed to be making good use of them. Each was armed with quills, parchments, and an inkwell.

"The smallfolk," Jon said without preamble. "We can't keep them at Winterfell through the winter. Too many fields went unharvested in the fighting, and the glass gardens are smashed beyond repair until spring. We also cannot rely on the Wolfswood for game. Not this winter."

"Your Grace," said Petyr. "The Vale is more than well-provisioned. I'm certain we can come to a reasonable arrangement. If it proves insufficient, the Iron Bank may be another solution."

"That may be, and we'll speak of it later," Jon agreed. "Starvation is not my only concern. We don't have the swords to defend them, and they must be moved for that reason as well."

He frowned at the papers on the table.

"At Hardhome, the White Walkers did not leave the shore. Thousands of wights stood there and watched us row away in that boat, though we were only a dozen yards away. I think… that they cannot cross salt water. If they could, surely they would have spilled around the edge of the Wall already, and taken us."

Tormund and Sigorn both looked thoughtful. "It may be," Tormund said at last.

Sansa stole a glance at Lord Baelish then, and when she saw his small smile she knew she had been right: he did not believe in White Walkers, or wights, or magic.

"The sea, then. It must be our solution for both problems." Jon sought Lady Mormont's eye. "How many smallfolk can Bear Island support?"

"Several thousand, my king." Her young voice was strong and clear. "If half of them can fish and work, they should survive well enough."

"Good. You will take the wildlings. They will be the most comfortable in such a northern place." He did not add that House Mormont was the least likely to slaughter them or let them starve, Sansa noticed. "The smallfolk of Deepwood Motte as well, few as they are."

"The Thenns will come to Karhold," Sigorn rumbled. "It is on the sea, Alys says, and we can make boats for fleeing if there are not enough."

"Yes," said Jon. "And you will take those from the Dreadfort, as well. Split your Thenns and appoint a warleader for those coming to the Wall. You will be staying at Karhold with your bride. I do not mean to leave you among the remains of the Karstarks and Boltons with no protection."

Sigorn looked unhappy at this, but made no protest. Sansa thought that if he were wise, he would take the opportunity to get his new wife with child, the better to seal the alliance Jon had made. The king had been softer with the Karstarks than she had expected. But then, Robb had been too harsh. Harrion Karstark had perished in the Battle for Winterfell, so that in the end they had little idea of what House Karstark had truly been thinking in allying with the Boltons.

"You mean to leave the land empty," Lord Cerwyn said.

"I do. If the Night King finds a way through the Wall you will be glad of it. Our smallfolk would become his army, and dead women and children are as dangerous as dead men. I intend to clear the north until spring."

 _If we survive that long,_ thought Sansa.

The conversation went on. The smallfolk of Winterfell and Cerwyn were meant for White Harbor, and Jon told the maesters to send ravens to other minor houses with orders for the smallfolk and those who could fight. Sansa herself was asked to supervise the parties leaving Winterfell, and she readily agreed.

At long last, they were done with that business. Jon asked one of guards to order food sent to his chambers, and looked around at them.

"There is one more thing. We've had news from Oldtown. Sam writes that some months ago, Cersei Lannister destroyed the Great Sept of Baelor with wildfire. The High Sparrow, Lord Tyrell, and Queen Margaery all perished inside." His eyes met Sansa's.

She was not sorry to hear that the sept was destroyed; her father had been killed on its steps and she hated the place. But Margaery had been kind to her, had once said she hoped to call her 'sister' someday. And the Tyrells had killed Joffrey… then again, they had let her take the blame for it. She could not decide how she felt, only knowing she was glad to be gone from the nest of vipers that was King's Landing.

"There's more," Jon said. "We would have heard of this much earlier, but the Grand Maester was killed too, and it was some time before the ravens flew. King Tommen threw himself from a tower in his grief. House Baratheon is no more."

Sansa inhaled sharply. Tommen had been a sweet boy. She had often thought she wouldn't have minded marrying him, had he been the eldest of King Robert's sons.

"Who is king now?" she heard someone ask.

"There is no king," Jon said. "Cersei Lannister sits the Iron Throne. The first of her name, and likely the last; I doubt she will reign long. The Tyrells have withdrawn from King's Landing, and there are whispers of an alliance with Dorne." He looked weary. "It doesn't matter. All it means is that we will get no help from the south, and I was never foolish enough to expect that anyway. But we now must waste a few troops defending Moat Cailin. I'm sure the Manderlys will be happy to join the Reeds and kill some Lannisters if the queen is foolish enough to come north."

She very well could be, Sansa suspected. News of Winterfell would trickle down south at some point, and Cersei blamed Sansa for Joffrey's death. If she was mad enough to blow up the Great Sept and destroy her alliance with the house that fed her, she was mad enough to send an army north to kill one girl.

"We have to move quickly," Jon said. "This mild weather cannot hold, and we must not still be traveling when the first winter storm strikes."

He dismissed them and left the Small Hall, motioning for Sansa to join him.

Ser Davos Seaworth followed as well, but she did not mind him. The air of faint suspicion that emanated from him when she was present did not disturb her. Loyalty to Jon was all she required of the man, and he was nothing if not loyal.

Davos suspected her of treachery, and Sansa could not blame him for it. She had failed to mention the knights of the Vale before the Battle for Winterfell, an omission that had cost many lives, or saved them, she had never been able to decide. If Ramsay had seen the knights of the Vale arrayed before him, he might have simply holed up in Winterfell and waited for them to starve.

Jon's solar was very warm. He had ordered his fire to be well-fed at all times, and had told her that he did not care for the cold as much as he used to. It roared and popped, and Sansa had to take off her cloak or risk sweating through her dress.

The meal was the same brown stew everyone in Winterfell ate that day, served with hard bread. She thought of King's Landing and its roasted swans, and found she preferred the stew, even if she was not sure what was in it. Despite that, her stomach was tense and unhappy, and she ate little.

"Did Lord Baelish tell you he planned to accompany you to the Wall?" she asked, stirring the contents of her bowl. There were thick chunks of potatoes and carrots in it, but she did not know what the slivers of meat were. Not beef, she was sure.

"Some days ago," Jon said.

"His plans have changed. Now I believe he intends to send a letter with you for the Iron Bank."

Jon just grunted.

"I've agreed to marry him," she announced.

Now he looked at her, his fork halfway to his mouth. "Marry him? Littlefinger?"

"Not now. After the war."

"Sansa." He did not sound as if he approved. "You told me only a fool would trust him. And now you want to marry him?"

"I don't want to marry him," she said sharply. "I want to save your life. You told me after the battle that we have to trust each other, that we have many enemies, and you were right. I don't know if telling you about the knights of the Vale would have changed anything, I wasn't even certain they would come; that's why I pushed so hard for you to wait."

She put her fork on the table and looked at him. "Let me tell you how this came to be, and why, and then you can decide for yourself whether I was wise. Even now, I'm still not sure. But I'm done hiding things from you."

Ser Davos looked deeply uncomfortable. "I will leave you to talk," he said, rising from the table.

"You will not," said Jon.

"Stay," Sansa said. Lord Seaworth dropped back into his chair, looking troubled.

She told them everything there in the hot solar, the whole brutal truth, unadulterated. It all flowed out: Petyr's murder of Joffrey and Lysa Arryn, the obsession he'd had with Catelyn Tully. His theft of Sansa from King's Landing, and the neat way in which he had pinned Joffrey's murder on her. The increasing certainty that he was grooming her to be his partner in his scheming. His handling of the Vale leadership and her suspicion that his feelings toward her mother had refocused on Sansa after the Red Wedding. Jon's mouth tightened at that, and the more she talked, the grimmer he looked.

She told them of the conversation she had had with Petyr after the battle, where she believed he had truly revealed himself, and her terror when he had told her he meant to go to the Wall.

"It would be so easy for him, Jon. So many in the Night's Watch must hate you now."

He opened his mouth to speak, but she pushed on before he could get a word out.

She told him of her realization that Petyr did not believe in the Night King or his dead armies. She explained the choice she had to make, whether to kill him or trap him, and the demands she had made of him if he wanted her hand. By the end of the tale, Davos had his elbows on the table and his head in his hands, and Jon's face was white with rage.

And then it was done. Sansa felt much lighter, as if she had spit up some vile poison. If she'd known how much better telling the truth would make her feel, she might have done it sooner.

"Do we have a suitable block?" Jon said. His voice was as cold as ice.

"You can't." The words would have been Sansa's, but Davos spoke them first. The man still stared at the table. "We would lose the knights of the Vale."

"Fuck the knights of the Vale." Jon stood and hooked his boot around the leg of the chair. He sent it flying with a kick; it smashed into the stone wall.

"Jon," said Sansa.

"Bronze Yohn Royce hates that snake. He'll dance on Littlefinger's grave, I know it."

"That may be, but Lord Royce doesn't rule the Vale. He would have no choice but to take the army home."

Jon stared at her, breathing heavily. "I won't let him have you."

"Feel free to execute him after the war. I'll help hold him down, if you like."

He gave a short bark of laughter. As quick as that, his anger was gone. He went to retrieve his poor chair, and sat.

"It's a dangerous game you play, Lady Sansa," said Ser Davos. Something in her tale must have eased him, for she no longer felt accused when he looked at her.

"Less deadly than yours," she said. "The question of killing my betrothed will be moot if you lose the one _you're_ playing."

* * *

Jon's head nodded over his cup of mulled wine. Sansa had spent the afternoon in his solar, not wishing to leave him now that he was so close to leaving her. Men had come and gone all day with messages for the king and finished orders to sign, but in the space between the short interruptions, she and Jon talked by the fire. They told more detailed stories of what each had been through since leaving Winterfell years before, and the snapping of the fire punctuated their sentences.

She described the Eyrie to him in all its remote beauty, and the long, climbing journey it took to get there. Remembering the terror of crossing a narrow stone bridge with nothing but air and death on either side, she shivered. In turn, he told her of the Wall, with its similar long fall if you went over the edge, and how it looked different every time he saw it, sometimes grey like stone, other times white or hard blue. Once, in the sun's setting light it had been gold and orange and rose, and looked like a wall of fire.

He told her that Tyrion Lannister had called him friend, and that Bran had written that the dwarf had made it possible for their lost brother to ride a horse again. She told him in turn how Tyrion had been kind to her, and never hurt her, and how she could not bring herself to love him.

They wondered how Bran fared, and both agreed that he was alive somewhere, and well. But their eyes did not meet when they said the words, and Sansa knew that their belief was so fragile it could not stand the smallest scrutiny. Neither wished to shatter it with a glance.

They did not speak of Arya.

Later, they decided to take a rare family dinner, and neither appeared in the Great Hall that night. They shared a crispy duck with potatoes roasted in its fat, and the steward brought a small kettle of wine to put over the fire. When Sansa tasted it, she found he had poured apple cider into it as well.

They finished it all, and when Sansa saw her brother losing his battle with sleep, she left her chair and kissed his forehead. He had been up before dawn, and would be again tomorrow.

"Go to sleep, Jon," she said, and he smiled up at her. He found a table for his cup, and rose to give her a long, hard hug. In her brother's arms, she felt safe and loved, and she hoped they both might live and see each other smile many more times before the Stranger took them.

The keep was quiet, but it was not terribly late, so she stopped by her chambers and collected the finished cloak for Sandor Clegane. When she folded the thing, it was bulky and unwieldy, and after struggling with it for some time, she slung it around her shoulders in defeat. The edge of the hood fell almost to her lips, so she pushed it back and went to him holding the edges of the cloak up like skirts, so they would not drag along the floor. She must have looked strange, like a child in her father's cloak, but no one saw.

This time she heard voices within the chamber, and decided to knock. She wondered who would choose to visit the Hound besides herself. When the door opened, it was not Sandor Clegane who looked down at her, but Thoros of Myr. Behind him she saw two others rise from the chairs set before the fire.

"The Lady Sansa," Thoros said. Whenever he looked at her she felt scrutinized, as if she was a weapon of uncertain quality. His eyes flicked to the cloak she wore, and the fingers that pinched together and held it off the floor.

"Do I intrude?" Sansa did not care for the speculation she saw in the priest's eyes, and the words came out colder than she meant them.

"Not at all, my lady," said Beric Dondarrion from the back of the room. "We were just retiring."

She stepped past Thoros into the room, and Lord Beric approached her and held out his hand. In this one's face she saw no curiosity at all. In truth, his gaze was distant, as if his thoughts were elsewhere. _Far to the north,_ she guessed.

She let the cloak drop and put her fingers in his. He bent and when he kissed her knuckles with dry lips, a feeling of bemusement came over her. The Lightning Lord had been very gallant once, but his kiss was the ghost of a courtesy; not particularly meant, given to one not particularly moved by it.

"Thank you for your hospitality, my lady," he said.

"It was gladly given. Ride safely tomorrow."

He nodded once, and walked past her.

"You as well, Lady Sansa," said Thoros behind her, where he could not see her lips purse at his voice. "For the night is dark, and full of terrors." The door closed.

There was a fire burning in the hearth; she supposed the priest must have lit it. Three chairs faced it, one at a greater distance from the fire than the others. Sandor Clegane stood beside it, with a hand on its back. He wore a new studded leather jerkin over an olive green tunic, she was glad to see.

"He thinks we're fucking," the Hound said to her.

Sansa started in confusion. "What? Who thinks…?"

"The priest. That red lecher."

The dream came to her again for a moment, the one she'd had the night of Petyr and Lysa Arryn's wedding. She saw herself waiting in her own bridal bed, and the Hound climbing into it, his thigh thick and roped with muscle. _I'll have a song from you._

To her dismay, her cheeks began to warm.

 _Only Sandor Clegane would say something so crude by way of greeting._ She wondered if he had meant it to be amusing, but she saw no humor in his look. _He loves to put people wrong-footed, that's all._

If that had been his wish, he succeeded beyond all measure. Sansa had absolutely no idea what to say, and could only stare at him, her cheeks flushing hotter and hotter every moment.

The cloak did not help matters; it pressed down onto her, heavy and warm. After a silence that went on so long that she no longer had any hope of hiding her reaction, she finally found the presence of mind to take the cloak off. _If he laughs at me…_ She did not know what she would do if he laughed at her.

Sansa straightened her back, determined to ignore what had just happened, and held the cloak up to show him.

"I made this for you," she told him. She was glad that her voice seemed to sound reasonably normal. "Come, try it on."

Clegane did not move. "Why?"

"To see if it fits."

He shook his head, and did not trouble to keep the scorn from his voice. "Why did you _make_ it?"

"To thank you. For saving my life, during the bread riots."

"I told you that was nothing."

" _Stop_ it," she snapped, and strode toward him. "If it was nothing to you, that's your business. But you don't get to decide how _I_ feel about it. My maidenhead and my life meant rather a lot to me at one time, you know."

She brandished the cloak like a weapon. "I made it for you and it's yours. You can burn it in the fireplace if you don't want it. But put it on. Please."

This time it was the Hound who had nothing to say, and Sansa stretched up on tip-toe and tried to drape it across his shoulders. He was too tall. "Please," she said again, more softly.

At last he bent, enough for her to swing her arm over his head and settle the cloak on his shoulders. She thought of her wedding to Tyrion then, and felt shame. _He must have been utterly humiliated._ And yet, she knew that if she had it to do over, she still would not kneel.

Her hands plucked at the cloak and twitched the fabric until it draped properly. "Stand up straight," she murmured. He obeyed, and she was pleased to see it did not touch the floor. She took his elbow and pushed him toward the chair. "Sit."

Leaning over him, she drew the hood up over his head. It fell well above his one remaining eyebrow, and she saw that it would not blind him. She tugged it forward to make sure, and then the Hound moved.

He was only shifting in the chair, and did not touch her, but she started. When she tried to steady herself, her hand fell upon his wrist where it lay on the armrest. Her eyes moved to his face, but his anger was gone and he only watched her. In the warm light of the fire his eyes looked almost kind, and the thought of what he had done for her family, every service a risk, and all unasked for, made gratitude bloom within her.

Sansa squeezed the wrist in a friendly way.

"You protected my sister in the Riverlands. Brienne told me what you said, that you were watching over her. There was no reward; you did it because you wanted to. And you protected me in King's Landing, when the reward was death. You tried to warn me, harsh though you were. You told Joffrey, 'Enough,' when it could have meant your head."

She removed her hand from his wrist and placed it on the unburned side of his face. Slowly, as though her hand might frighten him, she put her other on the burned side. She leaned closer. Sandor Clegane was as still as stone under her hands.

"This is for my sister." She placed a gentle kiss on the unburned cheek. The sable fur of his cloak's hood stroked her face.

"This is for me." She kissed the burned one.

She stood, and looked down to see his reaction. The set of his mouth was hard, and his eyes glittered in the firelight.

"I saved your life twice," he said flatly. "Once during the riot. And once on the ramparts, where that little shit spiked your father's head and made you look. You both would have tumbled off the bridge to your deaths, had I not stopped you." He lifted his chin and looked at her, his eyes half-hooded.

Sansa had forgotten, until he said it. She'd only remembered the handkerchief, and the gentle way he had dabbed at the blood on the corner of her mouth after Ser Meryn struck her.

 _He wants another kiss._ Had she not had her fill of kissing, the last few days? But part of her was curious; she'd imagined kissing the Hound many times, and had called it a memory.

Slowly she bent down again, and her hands went back to his face. Her thumbs brushed over his cheeks, one rough, one smooth, both thickly bearded. She looked into his eyes, and then she pressed her mouth to his.

Sansa wasn't sure exactly what she had expected, but it was certainly not what she got. The burned mouth stayed firmly shut, and did not open for her. After a few moments, she removed her lips from his.

"If you didn't want my kiss, why did you ask for it?"

She straightened, feeling bewildered and a little angry, and felt a lock of her long hair fall back into place a moment after the rest. When she glanced down, she saw his thumb and forefinger almost touching, and guessed what he had done.

"I didn't ask for it."

Sansa stared at him in disbelief. Had she really misread the situation so badly, or was he just being contrary? _He raised his chin and told me I owed him more_. She knew he wanted her; he had told her as much on the serpentine steps, though he had been drunk, and she too young to hear him. The warmth returned to her cheeks, and that only made her more furious.

Her mouth twisted. "Give me your knife," she ordered.

Clegane unsheathed his dagger at once and held it out to her, hilt first. His eyes dared her to try, but Sansa did not mean to cut him.

She sliced at the sleeve of her dress savagely, until the satin ribbon edging it came free. It would require an hour of sewing to fix, and the bitter thought only fed her fury. She cut the ribbon too, then bit the dull edge of the blade to free her hands, and tossed her head so that her hair fell over her shoulder. She glared at him, working with nimble fingers, and tied off the narrow braid with pieces of the ribbon. Then she took the knife from between her teeth and sawed at her hair.

She threw the little bundle at his feet.

"Take it, then, if that's the only part of me you're brave enough to touch," she said. "It's a week to the Wall in this weather. You can spend the ride thinking on what a great fool you are."

Quick as a snake, he was on his feet, and Sansa thought that at last she had goaded him enough, that he would close the space between them and seize her. She waited for his heavy hand to grasp her throat and his burned mouth to force hers open.

But he only stooped and picked up the little braid from the floor. His hand curled around it, and he looked at her face as if memorizing something he would never see again.

Sansa felt suddenly weary, and very near tears. She pushed her hair back over her shoulder and searched for something to say. She wanted to tell him that if he had ever cared for her, he would watch over her brother, as he had watched over two other children of Winterfell.

"Don't die," she said instead, her voice bleak.

In the hallway she closed the door behind her and leaned against the stone wall, forcing back the tears that wanted to fall. Through their shimmer she could only see a curl of her hair, slipping gently through his fingers. He'd let it fall, and had not tried to keep it in his grasp.

* * *

The morning sky matched her mood: gray, dreary, and threatening to precipitate. Horses filled the courtyard, and their breath plumed into the cold air. She saw a black courser nudge the chest of a man in a fine cloak, but he steadfastly looked away from her.

Sansa stood at her brother's stirrup and clutched at his boot. Before he took to the saddle, he hugged her so hard and for so long that tears began to creep down her face. When he kissed her forehead, his eyes were shiny. She wiped hastily at her face for his sake, that her tears might not bring forth more of his, and shame him before his men. But Jon blinked and let them skip down his cheeks, not caring who saw. When he mounted she grasped the ankle of his boot, knowing the moment was drawing near, and unable to let him go entirely just yet.

When every horse's burden had been checked, and every rider mounted, they began to file out the north gate. Then Jon looked down at her. Her tears were back, streaming down her face in a flood. It was all she could do not to sob.

"I'll send a raven when we arrive safe," he promised her.

"We'll see each other again," she said wretchedly. It felt like a lie. The horse moved then, and her hand fell away from the dark leather of her brother's boot.

Brienne followed her up to the battlements, and stood with her as Sansa watched the long line of riders trek north, along with her heart. They watched until the very last figure disappeared into the gloom. By then, her tears had long since ceased, and she was cold.


	5. Dark Wings, Dark Words

Chapter 5: Dark Wings, Dark Words

"Please, m'lady."

The girl trembled, and Sansa tried to harden her heart. Her maid had originally hailed from the Dreadfort, the daughter of a dead chandler. She had trembled just like this when she had arrived at Winterfell with the rest of the smallfolk, fearing death or worse at the hands of the Starks, at least until Sansa had taken her to be her maid. The huge yellow bruise that had been on her face was long gone, but fear did not fade so quickly.

"Don't send me to Karhold." Tears began to reinforce the shaking of the girl's limbs. "Tom Odling said he means to take me to wife, and he… he…"

"Was it he who hurt you?"

The girl shook her head and hugged her arms tightly across her middle. "That was his brother. The king… he's dead now. Tom is just as bad, but he hasn't been able to trouble me, since I've been in the castle."

"I understand," Sansa said. _Only too well._ "Well, if you don't wish to go to Karhold with your people, you may go to White Harbor, with Winterfell's."

The maid flinched. "Please, m'lady. You've been kind to me… you're the only one. Don't send me away."

"Everyone is leaving. It's not safe here," she said gently, "and I don't really need a maid, Miri."

" _Please._ I want to stay with you," she whispered. "I'll help clean the castle. I… I don't eat much. You'll hardly know I'm here."

Sansa looked to Brienne for help. To her dismay, her shield's eyes were beseeching. Podrick Payne stood behind Brienne, and their expressions were identical. She gave up.

"Very well," she said, cursing her soft heart.

Miri curtsied and fled her lady's chambers as soon as she spoke, as if afraid Sansa would change her mind. _She's right to._

"Some help you were." Sansa eyed Brienne and Podrick sourly. Her sworn shield had the grace to look embarrassed, but the squire looked at the door the girl had just vanished through.

"She probably _doesn't_ eat much," he offered.

"Shut up, Podrick," Brienne said. The boy looked at his feet and flushed.

"Well, that was a good morning's work," Sansa said irritably. "We've likely doomed a young girl to a cold death. Perhaps this afternoon we can find some kittens to drown."

Now both her companions were looking at the floor, and Sansa knew she had hurt their feelings.

"I'm sorry," she said. "That was unkind of me. I'm just…" She did not know what she was. Worried, for one. She hadn't slept well since the night of Lady Lyanna Mormont's departure, two days after Jon's. Sansa had watched the girl go with her thousands of wildlings, and her thirty-one remaining soldiers, and had felt relief.

"We know," Brienne said softly.

"It's my responsibility. The Karhold party leaves soon. And Winterfell still is not ready."

Considering the maid's reaction, Sansa suspected she might have to pry the castle folk out of Winterfell one by one. She would have to take a firmer hand with the rest of them, but clearly Brienne and Podrick would not be much assistance.

"Go," she said, waving them away. "Send food, and ask Lord Baelish to dine with me."

When they were gone she went to the window and opened the shutter. The sky was the color of slate, but no snow fell. It had been five days since Jon had left Winterfell. Too early for them to have reached the Wall, and far too soon for any ravens. At least she knew they were not mired.

Petyr found her still frowning out the window. He kissed her cheek, and his fingers found her elbow and drew her away from the glass.

"You're brooding again," he said.

Behind him, Podrick struggled with the silverware. Brienne watched the squire, her hip slanted and her thumb hooked under her sword belt. She muttered to the boy viciously, and Sansa very nearly smiled. The tall woman was so meek under ordinary circumstances, nearly cringing whenever someone spoke to her. But put a sword in her hand, or her hapless squire under her eye, and the woman turned positively truculent.

Littlefinger followed her gaze.

"Never mind, Podrick," he said briskly. "I'm sure you'd conquer the forks eventually, but for now my lady has need of me."

The squire's face burned red, and he bowed low. "My lord. My lady." He looked up at Brienne. "Ser. I mean, my lady!" His eyes widened, and Podrick Payne fled.

Brienne followed him at a more sedate pace, her eyes narrowed.

"Surely he isn't always that alarming tomato color," Lord Baelish said once they were alone. When she looked at him, the teasing smile she knew so well played about his mouth.

"He is," Sansa confessed, then covered her mouth with her hand.

Petyr showed her his white teeth, obviously pleased with himself. He leaned toward her for a kiss, which she allowed, then they both sat and busied themselves with the midday meal. It was another stew served in trencher bread, but Petyr treated it as though it was as fine a meal as any served in the Red Keep. She watched him arrange the cutlery, and thought that if she did marry him, at least she would never have to suffer her husband putting his elbows on the table.

"It is lovely to spend time with you, my dear, but I'm sure you didn't ask me here solely for my company," he said, some time later. "What do you wish of me?"

When Sansa finished telling him the potential difficulties of getting Winterfell's population to leave for White Harbor, he smiled at her.

"It seems a simple matter to me. I think you'll find they can be persuaded easily enough. Watch: it begins with the castellan."

* * *

They found Arlis Fostler in his chambers that afternoon, poring over lists of goods. From the state of his hair, Sansa thought the man could profit from growing some mustaches to tug, as his predecessor, Ser Rodrik Cassel, had done.

"My lady, my lord," he said, offering his chair to Sansa. He hastily moved papers from the one other seat in the room and set them on the desk. Petyr was quick to sit, placing his hands on his knees and smiling up at the man. Sansa lowered herself into the other chair.

"You've done a difficult job well these past months, Fostler. My lady and I are very pleased."

"Thank you, Lord Baelish."

"The Thenns and the Karstarks leave tomorrow," Petyr continued, "which is well and good. We've come to see how soon the White Harbor party will be ready. I do hope you've begun your packing."

"Packing? My lord? Surely you don't mean to leave Winterfell without a castellan..."

"I mean to leave it with two hundred knights of the Vale, fifty Hornwoods, and a few of Winterfell's own. Every man must hold a sword, or go to White Harbor. The king was quite clear."

Fostler looked astonished. "I thought… the winter town, yes… but the castle… who will clean it? Who will wash clothes and bedding, or cook, if you leave it empty?"

Petyr laughed. "Why, the soldiers. Winterfell will be a more comfortable camp than most. But still, just a camp. We must be ready to fight, and if all seems lost, we must be ready to flee. Quickly."

The castellan still looked unhappy, and Lord Baelish leaned forward and fixed him with a steady eye.

"Northern winters are legendary. Even in the south I've heard the tales: the sun may not shine for months, and snows can blanket the ground twenty feet deep. The sky is black, the wind screams, and women must crack the frozen tears from their eyes when their children die. Do you think we will need _stableboys_ holding pitchforks when the Others come, with their dead horses and ice spiders the size of hounds?"

Sansa watched the castellan. He had stopped wringing his hands together, and seemed transfixed by Lord Baelish's words.

"When the dead drift through the snow, and climb over each other, reaching for the walls until the last ones can simply climb over their brothers and step onto the battlements? Do we need maids and washerwomen then? No. We take our stableboys to White Harbor, where they can hole up in bed and eat eels until spring comes."

 _He sounds as if he truly believes his own words._ They were so convincing that the hair on her arms was trying to stand. She wondered if she would ever truly know Petyr's thoughts.

The castellan stood before them, his face a dull red. At last the man nodded. "It will take a week, at least."

"Four days," Petyr corrected. His voice was as cold as the winter he had just spoken of.

In the hallway, he took her arm and drew her down a few doors before turning and taking her in his arms. The kiss was hard and demanding. One of his hands moved from her waist and brushed over her breast before the fingers slid up and curled around the back of her neck. She did not push him away, but it occurred to her that she might be wise to start barring her chamber door when she slept.

At last he let her go. "You see? Secrets are power. When you know them, all doors open." He looked closely at her face.

Sansa thought it through: the talk of stableboys, and of bed, and the color in Fostler's face. Understanding came to her, and she said in surprise, "How did you know?"

The smile was back, and he did not answer her. Instead, he took her hand, and turned her toward the courtyard.

"Let's go threaten to burn down the winter town," he whispered into her ear, in the same manner that another man might invite his lady love to visit the finest, most wonderful garden in the Seven Kingdoms.

* * *

The first raven arrived a week later, three days after the last of the smallfolk left Winterfell. Lord Baelish had not burned the winter town, but in the end he had set the knights of the Vale to work with axes, and the remains of the wooden buildings were now piled in the castle courtyard, ready to be burned as firewood. Only the Smoking Log remained. Petyr had spared it, claiming a fondness for alehouses.

The quality of their meals had dropped severely the first two days after the last exodus from Winterfell, enough that Sansa had briefly regretted sending Gage away. He was the only man of her father's household who still lived, and he had flatly refused to leave until she explained what could happen to young girls left alone with hundreds of soldiers. The man had been trying to pass his daughter, Turnip, as a boy for months, but Sansa knew his secret, and chose to take a leaf from Petyr's book.

Today's soup had been tolerable, though, and her regret over the cook had faded to nothing even before the maester knocked at her door with the letter. It was sealed with white wax on gray, and there was a tiny pinpoint of red at the direwolf's eye

 _We are at the Wall, and safe._

Sansa turned the little scroll of parchment over, but the back was blank. Had she waited almost two weeks for seven words? She ran her fingertips over the ink, and saw how finely the words were written; a maester must have penned it for him. She wished Jon hadn't given away the task, so that she might have had something his own hand had touched, to hold in her own. _When I see Jon again, I will teach him how to write a real letter._

There was a small chest on her desk, where she kept her jewelry. She found a chain and threaded the key onto it before dropping it over her head. Sansa set the little parchment carefully into the chest and locked it, then tucked the key into her bodice.

The window called to her then, as it did many times a day, and when she checked the sky there was still no snow. The looming clouds didn't hold her attention the way they had before, now that she knew Jon and the others were no longer traveling, so she left the shutters open and searched in her solar for a suitable ribbon to repair her damaged dress.

The maester came again within the hour. When Sansa read the second letter, she began to weep. A half hour later, when Brienne found her, she was still sobbing, the parchment crushed in her fist.

"My lady!" Her shield flew across the room and knelt before her. "What's happened?"

Sansa felt a hand touching her forehead as if checking for fever. She batted the fingers away and held up the parchment. Her hands shook, and when Brienne took the paper from her, she pressed them to her face.

 _Sansa,_

 _Our brother lives. Bran has been at the Wall for some time, and swore the Night's Watch to secrecy. He begs me to send you his love, and to tell you that he will write you soon._

 _I have held him in my own arms, sister. He is alive, and well._

 _Jon_

"This is wonderful news," Brienne said.

"Yes," Sansa answered. Like quicksilver, her tears turned to laughter. "Wonderful!"

* * *

 _My dear sister,_

 _I have been beyond the Wall. In some ways, I have returned more broken than I ever was. In others I am stronger than I ever thought possible._

 _It is hard to know what to write, to explain what has happened to me. I found a teacher. It seems preposterous to say baldly that he taught me a way to see what has happened in the past, and sometimes in the future as well, but in essence that is what happened._

 _Don't fear that I am mad. I can prove it to you. You met a fat drunken knight in the godswood of King's Landing, and suffered his kisses. You married Ramsay Bolton at Winterfell. Your hair was a crown, and your winter gown was white with a mantle of brushed fur, which you later burned. I saw Theon Greyjoy's tears. Do not fear, sister, I did not see yours. I could not bring myself to stay in the moment when I realized what it was. I did see Bolton's death, though. I stood by your side at the kennel gates and we watched together, though we were separated by time. I wish I could have held your hand, and shared a smile with you as the bastard died._

 _I tell you this because I know you fear. I cannot see all, but I know we will meet again._

 _There is one other thing that I can only bear to share with you, Sansa. I have lost my direwolf. Summer is dead, and the blame is all mine. My foolishness cost him his life. Jon would not understand, but I think you might. The grief overwhelms me at times, and I do not know how to forgive myself. Perhaps you can advise me, when we see each other again. I know how strong you are._

 _Your loving brother,_

 _Brandon Stark_

* * *

 _Sansa,_

 _We are as ready as we can be. All across the Wall the nightfires burn, as Stannis wanted. It will be little enough, though the fires make the men brave._

 _Bran has given us a solution to one problem. I did not truly believe him when he told me his story, until Samwell Tarly rode with his wagons from Eastwatch-by-the-Sea last week, just as our brother said he would._

 _If I was Lord Commander still, I would have thrown my fat friend in the ice cells for what he has done. But I am not, and we now have a thin hope of a successful retreat if all goes badly, so I must grit my teeth and be grateful. I have sent Sam by ship to White Harbor, and then to Moat Cailin, to supervise a final barricade if the north is overrun. I confess I think he was grateful to go. He fears my wrath, though he would be the first to tell you that he fears_ _everything_ _._

 _They say Moat Cailin cannot be defended against a northern force. I think it is likely we will find out the truth of it._

 _A supply train is coming your way, also from White Harbor. I hope you are warm, and well._

 _I love you, sister._

 _Jon_

* * *

 _I thought you knew what he had done, that you were only biding your time until you could make things right. But when I heard that you plan to marry him… well, you clearly don't know. I hate writing letters but I enjoyed the story of the last man to cross you, and someday I would like to hear of how you choose to murder this one._

 _When the Gold Cloaks took your father after Robert's death, it was he who held the blade under Eddard Stark's throat, and said, "I told you not to trust me."_

 _I was there in the throne room, killing your father's men, if you wonder how I came to know this._

 _Everyone was surprised when Joffrey failed to follow the plan, which was to send your lord father to the Wall after using you to get the confession of treason. Everyone except the executioners, and Littlefinger._

 _Your betrothed met with the boy several times before your father lost his head on Baelor's steps. I was guarding the door, so I didn't hear, but it's not hard to imagine what flattery he used to get his wish. Some horseshit about showing power, kingliness, and not dancing on woman's puppet strings, most like._

 _It is cold here. I wouldn't mind it if there weren't fucking fires everywhere._

Sansa read the unsigned letter three times. The seal was only a yellow blob with a thumbprint in it. Peering closer, she saw three short lengths of copper hair pressed into the wax.

She sat at her desk for a long time, running her fingertips over the tiny ridges in the wax that Sandor Clegane's thumb had made. _Why did he do it?_ Sansa did not quite know which man she meant.

Something was wrong with her breathing, but she hadn't climbed any steps, or dashed across a courtyard, or participated in a strenuous dance. _I am only sitting in this chair._ Her lungs pulled the cool air deeply in, and expelled it harshly, over and over. The sound of her breath rushing through her nose and mouth was deafening.

 _A hound will never lie to you._ Sansa did not need to remember the words to know the truth in the letter.

 _Petyr wanted my mother. He could not have her while Father lived._

Her shoulders rolled back and she lifted her chin. The line of her back lengthened, until it was as straight and upright as a sword. Later, it would ache.

 _He is responsible for everything._

She could lay all the worst moments of her life at Littlefinger's feet. Dontos, floating dead in the water. Lysa Arryn trying to throw her out the Moon Door. Ramsay, who would have been the worst of all, had she not loved her father, who was Eddard Stark. Warden of the North, Hand of the King, Protector of the Realm. Blood of the First Men, and Lord of Winterfell.

Just an hour ago she had kissed Lord Baelish after they had finished eating the midday meal. She wanted to scrub her teeth. _If I never taste mint again, I will be happy._

The wrongness spread from her lungs. Deep in her chest, something grew there, as hard and cold as winter ice.

She remembered sitting beside Petyr in the Great Hall and thinking that she must try not to lean away from him, that she should not reveal her fear. Now if he was her dinner partner, she would have to resist leaning toward him and wrapping her hands around his throat.

Her heart had nearly finished turning to stone when the knock came at the door. _If it is Petyr, I will kill him_ , she thought dreamily. But when Sansa called for her visitor to enter, she saw it was only Maester Wolkan. The look on her face must have been terrible, for he took a step back when he saw her.

"Another letter, my lady."

Sansa took it from him. He was gone quickly, and she saw that this new letter was sealed with a direwolf in gray wax.

 _Wait for the snow. The knights of the Vale must not ride from Winterfell. A pillow will suffice for him, I should think._

 _Bran_

It should have been shocking. _My own brother._ But her body had ceased to matter to her after Ramsay. Only vengeance had mattered then, and the same was true now.

Sansa locked the letters in her chest and went to the window. She could still see the paving stones of the courtyard, so she did something she had not genuinely done for years: she got on her knees and prayed. She prayed to the old gods and the new, and when she rose she even lit a candle and sent a beseeching thought to R'hllor.

All the prayers were the same: _Snow. Snow. Snow._


	6. Snow

Chapter 6: Snow

The two letters changed everything. In the days and weeks that followed, Sansa discovered a vast, unexpected reservoir of calm patience within her. While waiting for Jon's raven to bring tidings of his safety, she had spent each day on a knife edge, even with a multitude of important tasks to keep her busy, and every night tossing and turning in restless sleep.

This waiting was different.

Once she knew with finality that murder was in her near future, the burden of decision fell from her shoulders. At night she lay in her bed with her hands folded over her stomach and drifted peacefully to sleep, thinking of her plans for Petyr Baelish. Her dreams were sweet; in them she walked with her family, in no recognizable place, but with a fine and longed-for togetherness that made the setting unimportant. Once, even her father was there, and she held Petyr's severed head up to show him. _I avenged you, Father,_ she told him. His shade looked at her sorrowfully, but she woke smiling.

There was not much to do during the days except work at making the knights of the Vale hers. She had every hope of making Petyr's death look like a simple passing during sleep, but if suspicion did fall upon her, she knew one hundred of her own soldiers could not withstand double their number of Vale warriors, should the latter choose to attempt a coup.

Sansa had no intention of ever again suffering imprisonment in her own home.

She walked the battlements several times a day. These excursions were no longer for the pleasure of solitude—she would not have found that in any case given the number of watchers on the walls—but were a necessary part of her plan.

The sentries stood watch in pairs, each set huddled around a fire set into a small metal brazier. At night they lit tall torches as well, and Sansa often felt like a moth, flitting from one fire to the next as she visited the men. Her sworn shield trailed her faithfully, and the squire as well, when he was not occupied with other duties.

In the beginning, she only asked the men's names and smiled before moving on. She examined their gear, and any man with a particularly poor piece soon found it replaced. She frowned at cloaks that were not heavy enough, and later would present the owners with new, thicker ones. The ripped cloaks she insisted on mending with her own hands. She took her basket and a candle out into the Great Hall after dinners and stitched right there on the benches, seated among the soldiers.

She sang for them as she worked, drawing deeply from the part of herself that wanted others to be happy and comfortable. When a few joined in as she sang "On a Misty Morn," one evening, she knew she was succeeding.

She taught Miri to knit socks, and bade her sleep in Sansa's rooms so that she would be safe, away from the men. They shared the bed at night, and both slept warm, though occasionally she had to soothe the girl out of a nightmare. She did not mind. The maid was a far better sleeping companion than Sweetrobin had been, as she did not wet the bed or pay any attention at all to Sansa's breasts.

One memorable afternoon Podrick sat with them in the solar and tried his hand at making a sock. Sansa smiled at the resulting blob of wool, but the look of dismay on sweet, timid Miri's face as she struggled to find a compliment was too much, and the Lady of Winterfell could not stop a laugh from escaping her. The squire looked so pleased that she suspected he had hoped for that very reaction. _He is too good-hearted to be a knight,_ she thought, but she suggested lessons with Maester Wolkan regardless, to aid him in that pursuit.

The maester was at loose ends himself, with no injured to tend to and a quiet rookery. Sansa had considered writing to the Hound, but she did not know what to say to him, and in the end chose to say nothing. Her letters to Jon and Bran went unanswered, and after a few weeks she did not take up the quill again.

Maester Wolkan seemed happy to continue Podrick's education, and even took Miri under his wing, beginning the long process of teaching her to read and write. Sansa liked to look in on them during the lessons, the squire's light brown hair contrasting nicely with Miri's black curls as they bent their heads together over the books. They seemed the picture of innocence. But Podrick had suffered neglect, war, and the Lannisters, just as she had. And Sansa was unpleasantly certain that Miri had been raped at least once, the way she shied from all men but Podrick. The girl had even been afraid of Ser Davos Seaworth, who to most young people was nearly as menacing as a newborn puppy.

Sansa's own innocence was so far behind her that she hardly spared a thought to the necessary evils she committed to further her plan of ridding herself—and the world—of Petyr Baelish. The Hound had scrubbed the scales from her eyes with his letter, and she felt at long last that she understood Littlefinger perfectly and completely.

He was a tremendously clever man, adept at turning chaos to his advantage, and perceptive enough to take normal circumstances and twist them so that they too served him. He took pride in his machinations, and lived for the thrill of his victories. But he had been defeated once, far in the dim past, and there was only one way he could wipe away the certain, terrible fact that Catelyn Tully had never loved him.

Sansa knew what he wanted and what he would do before he even tried. It was inevitable; he had laid the groundwork for it himself these past few years; all she had to do was let it happen.

The hardest part of the whole thing was not responding too eagerly to his advances. _Wait for the snow,_ she thought when he kissed her, willing herself to let each kiss only stretch out a few moments longer than the previous one. If she could have killed him safely the first time his lips brushed her neck and his fingers slid underneath the collar of her dress, she might have pressed herself to him and demanded he take her to his bed. It could have ruined all, for what he wanted was to conquer her, not be seduced by her. He might have even suspected danger if she had; it was essential that Petyr push, and Sansa resist, until the time was right.

So she shoved him away with a little gasp and widened eyes, then walked away from him and forgot him at once. She didn't think of him until much later that evening when she curled up next to her sleeping maid and savored her plans for the man who would soon be her lover, and her victim.

Later, she would look back on that calm, snowless month and realize it had been one of the only stretches of time since arriving at King's Landing in which she felt no fear. She had stopped being afraid of Petyr Baelish the moment she read Sandor Clegane's letter, and as she could do nothing for Jon or Bran or the men at the Wall, she set aside her fear for them to focus on her pursuit of vengeance.

The time passed quietly, if not happily, until she woke one morning to a sky so dark it was almost as if the sun had forgotten to rise. The wind howled, and when she went to her window snow had filled the windowsill despite the wind constantly trying to claw it back out.

Sansa shivered, though her room was not particularly cold. Then she left the window and climbed back into the bed, hushing Miri's sleepy mutters. She would need all her strength for what would soon come, and chose to sleep a little longer.

The screaming of the winter wind was a lullaby in her ears.

* * *

The first two days of the storm were bitterly cold, and the wind so strong that Sansa had to wind a scarf around her head when she went on her rounds or risk having her face scoured. But on the third day when the wind died and the temperature rose, it began to snow in earnest. The flakes plummeted fast and thick from the gray sky, and sound seemed to leak out of the world as winter laid its heavy cloak over Winterfell.

On the fourth day, when she saw that the snowfall still had not abated, she asked for a bath. She washed thoroughly and carefully, and afterward Miri combed Sansa's hair by the fire until it was dry and smooth. She left it loose, and chose a dress she knew Petyr favored.

 _Tonight,_ she thought.

When Brienne arrived, Sansa sent Miri to the maester for lessons, and made her first visit of the day to the battlements. The men only stood two hour watches after her suggestion to Albar Royce that the weather was too punishing to stand in for long. He had agreed, and the welcoming smiles on the men's faces when she took to the walls suggested that that they knew who was responsible for the reduced duty.

The day passed much the same as the thirty or so that had come before, until the late afternoon. Sansa was on her third visit to the battlements, and was speaking to a young soldier just west of the South Gate. Like herself, the man was kissed by fire, and she was admiring the contrast of white snowflakes in red hair when she heard the scream of a horse.

The sound was muffled and faint, but unmistakeable. Both of the soldiers turned their heads north, toward the courtyard. Beside her, Brienne's hand went to the hilt of her sword.

When Sansa looked, there was little to see through the curtain of falling snow except for a dark mass writhing in front of the stables. The horse's scream sounded again.

"Someone's fallen," she said, and began to hurry back to the South Gate. The snow was treacherous enough that she did not dare run, so by the time she descended from the heights and arrived at the scene she had to push past a dozen men to see the cause of the commotion.

A brown horse struggled to rise on a broken leg, and a person was on the ground half underneath it, rolled in snow and in danger of being crushed by the horse's mad thrashing. Men shouted and tried to reach the figure, to no avail.

When the horse sounded its agony a third time, Sansa shouted, "Someone _kill_ it."

Brienne went forth, and after a final agonized cry, much louder than the others, the animal was finally still. Bright red blood sprayed across the snow, and two men knelt by the cloaked figure to uncover it.

Sansa saw white patches in the dark hair and knew at once that they were not snow.

"No," she said. _He's mine._ And then, because she had no choice, "Get the maester."

A line of blood crept darkly from Lord Baelish's ear. His face was pale, and his eyes were closed. Sansa fell to her knees and pressed her fingers to his throat. The heart still beat, and she looked wildly up at the crowd around her.

" _Get the maester!"_ she said again, and this time a man broke from the back of the crowd and ran toward the keep, slipping and stumbling in the slick snow.

"Brienne, take him," she ordered. Her sworn shield knelt and lifted the limp body. Petyr looked like a child in her arms. The snow was very deep here, nearly to her knees, and when the tall woman began to churn through it toward the keep, Sansa had to step in the footprints she left to keep up. Others followed; she heard the snow squeak as their boots compressed it, and the breath of a dozen men as they struggled to keep pace.

"What happened? Did anyone see?" she said over her shoulder as she went.

"He rode in through the main gate, m'lady." A man spoke from behind her. "The horse went down, and so did he."

 _There's nothing in the winter town. Why was he there?_ Only the Smoking Log remained, and it was empty. Wasn't it?

By the time they reached the warm interior of the keep, Sansa was sweating. Maester Wolkan met them in the hallway outside Petyr's chambers, and the moment Brienne deposited Littlefinger onto his bed the maester was there, running his fingers deftly over Petyr's short hair.

Sansa watched as he pulled back the eyelids, and noticed with unease that one of the pupils was wide and black. The other was just a pinprick.

"He must have hit his head very hard. The skull is fractured."

The examination continued, and Maester Wolkan produced shears from his robes and cut away Lord Baelish's clothing until only the smallclothes remained. Sansa saw a long, thick scar running from his navel almost to his neck. _My uncle gave him that._ She could not stop thinking of how she had planned to see Petyr naked this very day, though not in this manner.

"Broken wrist," murmured the maester, putting the arm gently down, and set his ear to Petyr's chest. Whatever he heard there seemed to please him.

"Will he live?" Sansa asked.

"I do not know, child. The skull will heal, but if the brain has been damaged… he may die, or he may become an invalid. Or he could recover fully. We'll have no hint until he wakes. If he does. He's in the hands of the gods, now."

 _He is not supposed to be in their hands. He's supposed to be in mine,_ she thought. _This was supposed to end today._ Then she wondered if this accident could be the gods' gift to _her._ The thought stilled her.

"I will bind his wrist," the maester continued, "but the rest he must do on his own. We must keep him warm, and we dare not move him."

He left them briefly, and when he returned to plaster the wrist Brienne was feeding the fire. Sansa drew a chair up to the bed and took the good hand in her own. His flesh was chilly, and the fingers did not respond to hers.

After an hour the hand had warmed, and the maester was done.

"If he wakes, send for me at once," he said. "Unless you wish me to stay?"

"No," she said. "I will sit with him."

"I'll return later tonight, then, to see how he fares."

Sansa nodded, her eyes on her betrothed's face. It was strange to see it in repose. He hardly looked like the Petyr she remembered, without his gray-green eyes open and laughing at her, the crow's feet crinkling around them. The corners of the mouth were neutral, lacking the customary smile; neither did they turn down in pain. _I will never see that smile again._

"Brienne," she said. "Will you give us privacy?"

The big woman nodded, and Sansa turned her head. "Please… will you guard the door? I want you near," she added.

"Gladly, my lady." Brienne's voice was hushed and somber.

When the door closed Sansa rose and locked it, wondering if Brienne had heard the quiet sound, and if so, what conclusion she would draw from it. Sansa had not spoken of Petyr to her since the day the three of them had met in Mole's Town. She had no idea what the woman had made of recent events; Sansa had offered no explanation of her sudden betrothal, and Brienne had asked no questions.

She returned to the Petyr's side, but instead of sitting again in the chair, she gathered her skirts and climbed onto the bed. She settled herself, one knee to each side of his hips, and looked down at him.

Petyr Baelish was a short, slender man. He had the look of someone who neither pursued physical prowess, nor was tempted unduly by food. His body was lean, with only the slightest hint of softness at the belly. Sansa touched the warm flesh there for a moment, but the long scar was more interesting to her fingers.

 _This is as close as I will ever get to my Uncle Brandon._ Her mother had said that Ned was a quiet, shy boy, that Brandon had been the wild, wolfish one. _He must have been like Arya._

Her fingertips followed the thick scar upward, and her body followed. The skin along his ribs was warm against her thighs.

"Are you suffering, Petyr?" she breathed, but he did not answer. If she went no further, perhaps he would wake and be damaged like poor Hodor. She imagined Littlefinger waking up kind and innocent, and only saying 'Petyr' for the rest of his life.

"I find you guilty," she whispered. "Of the murders of Jon and Lysa Arryn. Of Joffrey, and Ser Dontos. And my father, Eddard Stark." Sansa reached beyond him and took up one of the pillows from the bed.

"In the name of Jon, the White Wolf, the King in the North, and the blood of the First Men. By the word of Sansa of the House Stark, Lady of Winterfell, and Warden of the North, I do sentence you to die. The blood of the First Men runs in my veins, and I carry out your sentence with my own hands."

Sansa gently set the pillow over his face, then reared up and placed both her hands and all her weight onto it.

"Goodbye, Petyr."

* * *

They burned the body, as they had burned every soul that had fallen in the Battle for Winterfell. Sansa wore mourning black, and wept without shame. It was doubtful that anyone suspected her tears to be happy ones.

Except, perhaps, for Maester Wolkan. He had examined the body once she summoned him with the news, and peered closely at Petyr's face for long moments. Sansa had looked at the maester steadily, willing him to remember that he had not lifted a finger to help her with Ramsay Bolton. _You did not give me milk of the poppy for the pain, or even the meanest poultice. Not even a pitying look or a kind word._ It seemed he did remember, or perhaps he really had noticed nothing unusual, for his eye slid away from hers, and she never heard a word suggesting that Lord Baelish's death was anything other than an unhappy accident.

One raven arrived from the wall, the day after the funeral pyre.

 _Sansa,_

 _They have come. A fog covers them, but it shifts now and then and we can see the dark sea of them. There must be two hundred thousand corpses, and they all stare up at us, waiting._

 _Last night a black brother could bear the fear no longer and threw himself from the Wall. The brothers who remained watched as the smashed body dragged itself to its new fellows._

 _I have spread the lines too thin, and probably killed us. They have all come to Castle Black._

 _We will do what we can._

 _I wish we had gone together from the Wall, instead of trying to raise the North. Westeros is lost, but perhaps Essos will be spared, and will live to tell their children stories of the icy land to the west, where none but the dead walk. We could have been happy and warm there, perhaps._

 _I doubt that we will meet again. I love you, and I am sorry for it all._

 _Jon_

She took the letter to Albar Royce and begged him not to abandon her. Her terror was not feigned in the slightest. He offered her a handkerchief and assured her they would do no such thing, at least until Bronze Yohn Royce returned from the Wall with the rest of the knights of the Vale. If they did leave the north, he was sure they would offer her sanctuary in the Vale once again.

A week after the first snow, Sansa lost her footing on the battlements and stumbled into Brienne. Making the rounds had become a habit, and routine comforted her after the awful, fey letter Jon had written.

At first she thought she had slipped, but the heavy stones under her feet heaved and rumbled for long moments, and she heard shouting from all over the castle grounds. She clutched at Brienne's arm, not understanding what was happening, and felt her heart flutter in her chest like a trapped bird.

The weather turned on itself, and became strange and warm. A great mist rose from the ground and it rained so hard most of the snow melted. Lightning struck the First Keep one night with a crack that set Sansa's ears ringing, and then the air turned cold again and froze great deadly sheets of black ice all over the castle. Two men fell and broke limbs that day.

It was as if two gods tussled over the sky, one of summer and one of winter. Regardless of which one triumphed at any particular moment, the result was miserable, odd weather.

They did not know what had happened for several days, until the storm of ravens descended on Winterfell, during another strange warm spell. Sansa was in the courtyard when she saw the birds, and sprinted for the rookery.

The first six letters were all the same.

 _We come. Be ready to ride._

Hope sprang into her heart, until she read the seventh letter.

 _Lords of the Seven Kingdoms,  
_ _The Watch has fallen  
_ _Bring dragonglass  
_ _Bring Valyrian steel  
_ _Bring fire  
_ _The Others have come  
_ _Call your banners  
_ _The dead march south  
_ _The Long Night is here  
_ _The Wall has fallen_

— _Eddison Tollett, last Lord Commander of the Night's Watch_

* * *

 **A/N:** **Dolorous Edd's letter at the end of this chapter was written by /u/Pyroblam of reddit, and is used here with the author's permission. It has been lightly edited.**


	7. Blood in the Water

Chapter 7: Blood in the Water

For the first time, Sansa found herself considering that life might have been better in some ways had she been born male. Men took up weapons, fought, and often died, but at least they had the chance to take action and did not have to suffer the agony of being left behind and forced to wait endlessly for news or homecomings. She was even envious of her younger brother, who could not walk or fight with steel, for he was with Jon, and in the thick of things.

At least, she hoped he was. Bran had promised that the two of them would meet again, but 'We come' was vague, and she did not even know who had written the many letters bearing those words. She could not stop herself from picturing the Wall tumbling down in all its might to shake the very earth and crush Jon beneath its icy blocks.

Once the soldiers had been warned that they would soon ride to Moat Cailin and must be ready to leave at a moment's notice, they had quickly converted their gear into tight packages ready for flight. They spent their downtime in the Great Hall, where their commanders allowed them to have dice and cards, but no wine or ale. They were quiet, but seemed to tolerate the situation well enough.

Sansa's own packing had hardly taken an hour. She had rolled most of her dresses up in neat bundles, and laid them side by side in the wide, heavy drawers underneath her bed. She'd run her hand over a deep green velvet gown too fine to ride in, and wondered if she would ever wear it again.

Brienne had helped her with her saddlebags and bedroll. The gear made a small pile next to her chamber door, and every time she saw the neatly stacked packs she was reminded that much of her life had been spent running. _I leave clothes behind me everywhere I go._ But her bags were still twice the size of Miri's, and she felt an obscure guilt over it, even though she knew that she didn't really mind leaving her possessions behind.

In this third period of waiting, Sansa had neither duty nor vengeance to shield her from her fear, and everywhere she went she felt haunted by her own dread. It was her constant companion and she imagined that the Stranger must be walking just behind her, that if she turned her head quickly enough she might catch a glimpse over her shoulder of its half-human face grinning at her. After a few days she felt that she breathed apprehension in with every inhale, and with every exhale lost a bit more of her strength and hope. She bit her nails to the quick, then asked Miri to buff them as best she could, and took up wearing gloves even while indoors.

Perversely, Sansa found that she missed Petyr's presence. He had known what to say to bring her out of her brooding, and even once she finally knew what he was he had given her purpose and allowed her to set aside her worry over events happening elsewhere.

Even Brienne, normally so steady, was showing strain. She forgot to be cutting to Podrick, and took up fidgeting, shifting her weight from one leg to the other when she stood, her armor jingling every few moments. The Maid of Tarth seemed loathe to leave Sansa's side even for the two hours she spent bloodying Podrick in the yard each day. She was always near, but hardly spoke except to urge her lady to eat at meals.

Sansa no longer walked the battlements. Instead she stood upon them, fixed in one spot near the North Gate where she could see the Kingsroad as it wound north toward the Wall. Brienne brought a brazier for her and tended it with her own hands, for Sansa did not wish to share one with the sentries near her, and be obliged to speak. They watched the road and the sky, and only went inside long after dark, when they were too tired to stand anymore.

The weather remained fickle for some days after its warm snap, and Sansa fretted over it, for both mud and snow could slow travel to a crawl, and those north of her had deadly foes at their heels. On the fifth and sixth days winter seemed to gain the upper hand, and the air grew steadily colder. Sansa remembered what Jon had said about the Night King bringing the storm with him, and her fear deepened even as her worry over the quality of the roads eased.

The sixth day passed with no sign of riders from the north, and she hardly slept that night. Every time she shut her eyes she saw a flood of corpses rushing toward Winterfell. She saw Jon among them, face white and crusted with black blood, his eyes a bright blue they had never shone during life. Then her own eyes would snap open, staring unseeing at the ceiling until weariness drove them down again. In this torpid, nightmarish manner she passed one of the most unpleasant nights of her life.

On the seventh day, she dragged herself from her bed to begin her vigil. _It has been too long,_ she thought. _If they do not come today I will know they are lost._

 _Tomorrow I must begin to think of taking the men to Moat Cailin myself._

* * *

The horn blast was so loud in her ear that she almost fell over. Her heart pounded unpleasantly in her chest at the shock. Bewildered, she looked to her left; a dozen yards away the soldier breathed in hugely, the horn still at his lips as he prepared to sound it again.

Sansa had been nearly asleep on her feet, gazing out at the road but blind to what was on it. For a moment she was tempted to curse at her inattention, but the long, thin column of horses and men on the Kingsroad arrested her breath. They moved steadily, and though it was hardly noon the outer riders carried tall torches, the flames pale and colorless in daylight. _The dead don't carry torches,_ she thought, exulting.

The sight was so welcome that she hardly heard the next horn blast, or its fainter reply. She waited, vibrating with excitement, until she could make out the faces of Ser Davos Seaworth and Bronze Yohn Royce at the very front of the column. She looked further down the line, but did not see Jon, or Bran, or the Hound.

" _OPEN THE GATE,"_ she shouted. The cry was taken up by another voice on the other side of the gate, and Sansa left Brienne to douse the brazier alone while she scrambled down to the courtyard.

Ser Davos's horse looked tired, and so did he, though he smiled at her. Sansa patted the horse's neck and walked alongside it toward the keep, her chin craned back over her shoulder as she looked up at the knight.

"Where are my brothers?"

"They bade us leave before them, my lady. But they said they would follow, and should only be a few hours behind us."

Sansa lifted her hand from the horse and peered back along the column. She saw knights of the Vale, and Cerwyns, and Manderlys, and many others. But there were no black brothers or wildlings among them.

"What happened?" she demanded.

"I will tell you all," he said, dismounting and stroking the gelding's neck. "Though I don't understand it myself." He began to unstrap the saddlebags, and his movements were slow and spoke of exhaustion. Sansa began to help, until Brienne appeared and pushed her hands away with a scandalized look.

Men not on duty stood all over the courtyard, roused by the noise, and Sansa beckoned a few idle ones over. "Please. Will you help with the horses?"

"Aye, m'lady," said the man, taking the reins and bowing to all of them. "M'lady. M'lord."

"Thank you, Lady Brienne," said Ser Davos, when the Maid of Tarth slung his gear over one of her broad shoulders. She scowled at him and strode into the keep. Sansa had nearly forgotten that Brienne disliked Ser Davos, and guessed that she only helped him so that Sansa would be able to hear his news sooner. They followed, letting the stiff, burdened shoulders lead the way to Ser Davos's rooms.

They met Miri in the hallway, whose eyes widened at the sight of the Onion Knight. The girl fell in with them on Sansa's other side, and said, "Shall I fetch something to eat, m'lady?"

"I'll go with you," Brienne said brusquely, and dumped the saddlebags just inside the door.

Ser Davos crouched and rummaged through them, while Sansa stood and watched. He plucked dry clothes from within and looked up at her. "I'm wet through," he said. "If you'll give me just a moment…"

"Oh! Yes, of course. Many pardons." Sansa backed out of the doorway, thinking that her courtesies were so lost to her that she would have been willing to strip the man naked with her own hands if it meant she could hear his news at once.

Ser Davos was true to his word, though, and the door opened again after only a few moments. He bent one last time to pull a spare cloak from the packs, and wrapped it around himself before gesturing for her to precede him to a chair by the empty hearth. His bare feet were pale and white, and Sansa hoped someone would think to bring wood.

"What do you already know?" he said.

Sansa told him of Jon's letter describing the ocean of the dead that had gathered on the north side of the Wall. When she was nearly finished, Brienne and Miri returned with supplies. Podrick followed them, carrying a long basket of firewood.

Her sworn shield set Podrick to laying the fire, then leaned against the wall with her arms crossed over her chest. Miri offered Ser Davos a bowl of steaming soup and hot bread, her eyes downcast. Soon another bowl appeared at Sansa's elbow, and this time her maid offered a smile to go with the food. Sansa accepted it, and though she longed to hear what had happened at the Wall at once, she saw that poor Ser Davos was ravenous, and took pity on him.

At first she ate just to be polite, but when the first spoonfuls reached her stomach she nearly forgot the Wall altogether. They ate, and the only sounds in the room were the clinking of spoons against bowls and the flint sparking in Podrick's hands.

"They knew," said Ser Davos, letting his spoon fall with a final clatter against the edge of the bowl some minutes later. "I don't know how, but they knew."

"Who knew what?"

"Jon and Samwell Tarly. They knew the Wall would fall, and they knew when it would happen. They said they knew where the breach would be and where to place the wildfire. They must have been right, or we would all be corpses now."

Sansa remembered green fire whirling in a black sky, and the Hound's tears on her fingers. "Wildfire?"

"When Sam returned to the Wall from Oldtown, he brought enough wildfire to fill a lake. Or rather, the supplies to make the stuff. No ship will knowingly carry wildfire." Ser Davos shuddered, and Sansa knew he was thinking of the same night she just had. It was odd to think that he had been on the other side of that battle. "He took his family's Valyrian steel blade and used it as surety for a loan with the Iron Bank. Jon was furious."

Ser Davos shook his head. "But not furious enough to refuse the gift. Sam stood up to him and said the sword was his by birthright, and must fight the Others from Braavos."

Podrick had at last succeeded in lighting the flames, and Ser Davos stretched his feet toward it.

"They built a wooden shack west of Castle Black, and Sam taught a few of the Night's Watch to make the stuff before Jon sent him to White Harbor. Half went up the Wall in clay pots and barrels, and the other half they simply splashed on the ground, making a path nearly a mile wide.

"All the while, on the north side, the wights gathered. We launched the barrels at them with the trebuchets, and the dead never moved or reacted. The clay pots went over as well. We must have painted ten thousand wights green. Ten thousand, but not enough.

"Then one morning Jon gave the order to loose the fire arrows. One volley was all he wanted. The wights burned, and made no sound that we could hear. It was awful.

"After that, Jon said it was time. We climbed down the long way, with no one above to wind the winch for the cage. Soon Castle Black was as empty as the top of the Wall, and the king told me to go south with the main column. He said he would join us soon, and took the Night's Watch west, to the wildfire on the south side of the Wall. He said we were to lead the horses afoot until we knew it was safe to ride. When I asked him how we would know, he just said, "You will." And we did.

"We walked for several hours, and in the afternoon the ground rose up and threw us down. The horses panicked and scattered, but no one was injured. When I looked behind me, the Wall was gone, and the clouds were green."

Ser Davos's voice was weary and grim. He closed his eyes when he was done speaking, and the rest of them looked at him silently for long moments.

"They didn't catch up with you on the way?" Sansa whispered, though she already knew the answer.

"No, but we set a good pace, considering the snow on the roads." Ser Davos left his eyes closed, and pulled the cloak tighter around him, yawning. "They were well enough to light the wildfire barrier, my lady. It should have burned for days. And the king has hundreds of black brothers with him, as well as his wildlings and the Brotherhood. He is well protected, do not fear." He yawned again.

 _Telling me not to fear is like telling the sun not to shine,_ she thought. It would have been unkind to say the words out loud, though.

"We will leave you to your sleep, ser," she said instead.

Lord Seaworth didn't respond, and they rose to leave. Podrick paused to feed two more logs to the fire, and before the four of them were even to the door they heard Ser Davos's long, soft snore behind them.

* * *

The story of the Wall falling must have frightened Miri as much as it had Sansa, for when the Lady of Winterfell resumed her vigil on the battlements, the maid joined the little group. Sansa had no objection, feeling the comfort of company, and not having the heart to deny that company to another. Brienne was by her side, as ever, and Podrick took up a spot next to Miri.

The long column of soldiers was safely inside the walls, and Sansa watched an empty road. Many bustling sounds filled the courtyard, but Sansa had little interest in the activity behind her. She no longer felt weary. The wind was brisk but not punishing, and was fresh enough to keep her awake.

The daylight was just beginning to seep out of the sky when snow began to fall. She nearly moaned in frustration, and her gaze was suddenly caught by the gloved hands of two of her companions. Podrick and Miri were holding hands silently as they gazed north, and something seemed to squeeze Sansa's heart. It took her long moments to realize the feeling was jealousy. She had never felt so lonely in her life, not even in King's Landing, with her family gone and enemies all around her. She stopped looking at the clasped hands, and put her eyes back on the road where they belonged.

Soon the sentries lit their torches, but the light did not spill very far from the walls. The falling snow, though light, further obscured the view until Sansa despaired of being able to see anyone approach at all.

"Sansa," Brienne said, some time after the sky had turned black. The woman stepped forward, peering into the darkness, and Sansa felt a huge, overwhelming surge of excitement when she realized Brienne had failed to remember to call her "Lady."

She joined her shield, pressed up against the parapet, and looked closely.

"I see them," she breathed.

A horse pushed through the snow, led by a dark figure and carrying a rider. _Are they alive?_ She could not call for the gates to open without knowing, and she saw no torches. Jon's command had been clear: torches must be lit and carried on the march if there was a chance the dead were near.

More dark figures materialized through the falling snow, trudging in ragged lines that brought terror into her throat. Her breath came ragged, and the cold air seared her throat.

And then a golden glow emerged from the darkness, dim and bobbing drunkenly from side to side, but growing ever brighter. A more welcome sight she had never seen, and she nearly sobbed in relief.

"The gates." The words wanted to stick in her throat, and she nearly choked forcing them out. "Tell them to open the gates."

For the second time that day Sansa flew headlong from the battlements. She knew she risked breaking her neck, but she could not slow herself. The gates were only partly open when she reached them, and this time she did not wait, but turned sideways, slipped through, and ran.

When she was nearly upon them, she spied a black curl peeking from behind the scarf of the figure leading the horse, and her heart nearly burst with joy.

"Jon," she shouted, and threw her arms around him.

To her surprise, he struggled, and she knew at once that the frame of the person she hugged was too slender to be her brother.

"It's nice to meet you too." A girl's merry laugh sounded in her ear, and Sansa hastily let go. Dark eyes sparkled at her. "You must be Sansa. I'm Meera Reed."

"Meera," she repeated in confusion, and looked to the horse's rider. He unwound the scarf from around his head, and behind it was a face she had not seen in years.

"Sansa," Bran said, and she found her little brother's voice deeper than it had any right to be. She stood for a moment, shocked at the loss of the child's voice she remembered, and then flew to him.

"No, don't," he said, laughing as she tried to drag him from the saddle. "I'm strapped in."

So she took his unresisting foot from the stirrup and mounted behind him. Her arms went around him, and his hands covered hers and gripped them tightly.

"Bran, Bran…" she chanted his name and leaned around to pepper as much of his face as she could reach with kisses.

"I've missed you, big sister."

She hardly noticed when the horse began to move, and they passed under the gates and were within the walls of Winterfell before she managed to regain coherence.

"Where's Jon? Is he well?"

Bran was silent for too long, and she squeezed him harder, her fear rising again. "Tell me!"

"He's looking, my lady," said Meera, still holding the reins of the horse. Brienne appeared at her side, and Sansa reluctantly accepted her help in dismounting. She moved forward to look up at Bran's face. His eyes were open, but all she saw was white.

"He's nearly here," Bran murmured, and then his eyes were blue again, and looking down at her. "We had some trouble on the road. Once we were several days south of the Wall, some black brothers thought to take revenge against him. There was a bad fight, in darkness. Jon took a serious wound, and the maester was killed. It would be best to have one waiting…" He sounded oddly unworried.

There was a flurry of movement at the edge of her vision, and Sansa saw Miri's small figure sprint off toward the keep.

More people were coming through the gates now, some mounted and some afoot, and Sansa saw that many bore recent wounds. She looked again at her brother, and this time she recognized his mount.

"That's the Hound's horse," she said. _If he is dead, and I did not write to him…_ "Does he live?"

"He's bringing Jon."

Sansa let out a breath, and looked around her. Another horse approached, its head low. Like Stranger, this animal bore a burden that was strapped to the saddle. Thoros of Myr's face was white and lined with pain; he slumped over the horse's neck. Blood stained one of his trouser legs entirely black. As Sansa watched, a thick drop of dark liquid dripped from the toe of his boot into the snow.

Beric Dondarrion led the horse, his face was gray with exhaustion. When he saw her he stopped, and the tired horse bumped into him.

"A maester, my lady," he whispered.

"One comes," she promised.

But when Maester Wolkan arrived, his quick examination left him shaking his head. "He is very weak."

Sansa stared at the priest, who was moaning faintly in Myrish. She had never liked him, but she knew what followers of the red god could do. _If Jon dies…_

"Save him," she said to the maester. "Try your hardest. Brienne, will you help? Beric's chambers are still free." Thoros cried out when the Maid of Tarth slid him from the saddle, but was silent once he was free of the horse.

Weary black brothers and wildlings in mottled gray furs still trickled through the gates in twos and threes, and almost all were bandaged in some way, though none showed injuries as serious as the red priest's. Soon, Brienne returned, and some time later the maester did as well.

The gates were empty of men, and Sansa could wait no more inside the walls. She walked through the open gates and into the dark snow. Bran and Meera came with her, Stranger pacing quietly.

"You're a fine rider, Lord Brandon" she heard Brienne say. "I've ridden that beast, though only with difficulty."

"Animals like me," Bran said, and Sansa heard a smile in his voice.

Sansa ignored them and kept walking until she reached the edge of the light shed by the torches on the battlements. There she chose to wait, until at long last a tall figure appeared out of the darkness.

The man wore no cloak, and his head was wrapped so thoroughly with a scarf that she could not see his face, but she knew it was Sandor Clegane; the only man of his size in the north was Bronze Yohn Royce, and he was already inside the walls.

The Hound dragged a makeshift sled, and she could hear his growling grunt of effort with each step. When he drew close, she saw his eyes were nearly shut; he did not notice her.

"Sandor," she cried.

The eyes opened, and he staggered as though she had woken him from a deep, unpleasant dream. His gloved hands unclenched from around the handles of the sled, and the Hound fell. First his knees sank into the snow, and then both hands. His back heaved with heavy, rasping breaths, but with another growl he reared back onto his heels. His eyes rolled unwillingly up to meet hers, and the terrible look she saw in them made her blood run cold.

Sansa darted to the sled. Her brother lay nestled on the long, sable cloak she had made for the Hound. Its hood hid much of his face, and Jon's own cloak was draped over him, tucked around his limbs. The second cloak, which Sansa had labored so long over, that it might look as much like Ned Stark's as possible, accounted for most of the rest of his face.

She peeled it away, and saw the half-closed eyes, and the blue skin. Moaning, she stripped off her glove and touched his cheek. It was as cold as the grave, and she knew she did not touch living flesh.

Sansa's heart vanished from her body at once with a scream, leaving a jagged, bleeding hole inside her. She heard voices, but could not understand them over the awful sound that her own throat was making.

She threw herself onto the sled, shouting her brother's name, and felt arms circle her, trying to pull her back.

" _Where were the horses?"_ she screamed. _"Why was he not riding?"_

"He was," a raw, rough voice said into her ear. "Horse died." She fought him, struggling wildly and sobbing, until Bran's calm voice cut through her pain.

"Sansa," he said. "The priest."

Panting, she stopped at once. "The godswood," she said in a desperate voice nearly as hoarse as the Hound's. "Take him to the pools and warm him. I will get Thoros."

She ducked out of the circle of Sandor Clegane's arms and dashed back toward Winterfell. _He must live,_ she thought over and over. In the courtyard she slipped and cracked her knee a great blow on the flagstones. The burst of pain was sickening, but she ignored it and scrambled up again.

Into the keep she flew, so intent on her goal that she did not even see the men staring at the weeping woman running between them, with her hair streaming an auburn banner behind her.

She burst into Beric Dondarrion's rooms with such violence that the heavy wooden door slammed into the stone wall with a crash.

The Lightning Lord sat in a chair next to the bed, the priest's hand in both his own. His head was bowed, and he did not look up at the noise of Sansa's entrance.

"He raised me so many times I don't even remember how I met him," said Lord Beric. His voice was very quiet; she could barely hear him over the sound of her own gasping breaths. "I only remember that he was my friend. For years, he was my friend."

"No," Sansa moaned. But the obscene sagging of the priest's jaw made her a liar. The face was gray; the spirit had departed from the flesh.

"All men must die," whispered the Lightning Lord.

Her new, small hope had fled at the sight of the corpse on the bed, and Sansa let out a choked sob. "Melisandre was always talking about the Lord of Light having reasons for everything he let happen," she said bitterly. "He brought my brother back only to let him die here, today? What is the reason in that? Tell me!"

"You're asking the wrong question." Beric Dondarrion looked at her at last, and though his face was dry she saw the haunted grief there. "The question isn't why he let Melisandre bring Jon back. It's why he brought _me_ back. All those times, until I was a ghost in a man's body, and only at the end do I understand."

He said a quick prayer and kissed his friend's hand. Then he let it drop, and stood.

"Take me to him," he said. "My faith is strong today." Her hope rose again, as faint and thin as a wisp of smoke.

When they walked out of the keep, Podrick was waiting with horses. Sansa mounted, feeling as though she was in some terrible, endless dream. Time was behaving strangely, for she felt it had been hours since she had touched Jon's cold face, yet when she and Beric entered the godswood at a canter, she saw that the group of people clustered at the edge of the first pool were only just removing the stiff body from the sled.

Sansa dismounted and threw the reins over the horse's neck. _Let it wander._

She reached the pool just as Brienne began to wade in, with the king in her arms. Sansa followed; the water was hot and smoking, and the weight of her sodden skirts dragging at her was steadying.

Brienne knelt and lowered Jon into the water, letting his head rest in the mud. Miri scrambled forward and knelt to steady it with shaking hands. Sansa saw that the girl's face was wet with tears. It felt right, that another should cry for Jon.

Her sworn shield moved deeper into the water, holding his feet, and Sansa knelt at her brother's right side, stretching her arms underneath him to help support his cold weight.

And then Beric Dondarrion splashed into the water and took the place on the king's left side. Sansa expected him to pass his hands over the body and say a fervent prayer, but he merely murmured, "Lord, I am ready," and bent his head over Jon's.

He pressed his lips to the king's in a gentle kiss. Long moments passed, but nothing happened.

Sansa watched as Beric lifted his head, faint confusion beginning to rise in his face, and then the man spasmed and his eye rolled back into his head.

"Jon," whispered Miri.

Beric Dondarrion slumped and fell to the side. His limp body slid lower and lower, until the water crept over his head and covered it.

 _What is happening?_ Sansa thought.

"Jon," said the maid, weeping.

The body resting on her arms twitched, and then the muscles strained so hard she could not hold him. Water sprayed everywhere as he kicked, and she heard a great gasp come from the body, the first breath of life, taken in agony.

" _Jon!"_ Many voices sounded: Sansa's, and Bran's, and Miri's. Brienne surged forward, to help hold him still and keep him from drowning, but he evaded the hands, twisting onto his side and vomiting into the mud. A thick, black, awful smelling substance came out of him, and then he was shuddering. He coughed thickly, hacking up more of the vile slime, and sobbed.

"It's all right, Jon," said the maid, running her fingers through his hair. "It's all right."

Sansa was so relieved at seeing life returned to her brother that she could only stare. There must have been a wound at his side; red blood bloomed in the water. _Red, not black,_ she thought. _He is alive._

"Ghost…" he moaned. His voice broke, and Sansa shuddered. "Ghost…"

"I'm sorry," said the maid. "I'm so sorry, Jon."

Jon coughed, and kept his eyes tightly shut, moaning his direwolf's name again and again.

Something bumped Sansa's hip, and she looked down to see Beric Dondarrian's corpse bobbing next to her. His dead eye stared up at her from beneath the water.

She looked back toward Jon, and saw Miri scrub tears from her face. When the girl's hands fell away, Sansa began to feel light-headed.

 _I never noticed before. She looks just like my sister._

Sansa fainted.


	8. A Ghost in Winterfell

Chapter 8: A Ghost in Winterfell

Pain woke her. The throbbing in her knee deepened into a sharp ache, and Sansa drew her heel up the bed to bend and ease the complaining joint. At the movement, all the other muscles in her body woke and chorused that they were stiff and sore.

The ceiling of her bedchamber appeared when she opened her eyes, lit by the weaving light from the fire in the hearth. She was on her own bed, warm and dry. The keep was quiet and the room was dark; it was still night.

Sansa felt hollow.

 _Jon is alive. Arya is alive. Bran is alive._ She said the words to herself in her head, but felt nothing.

When she sat up, her knee twinged and a soft hiss came out of her. Someone had carried her here and undressed her; she was only wearing her shift. When she looked down she saw Brienne's cloak underneath her. She stared at it for a few moments, then rolled carefully out of the bed and to her feet. Her hair swung around her shoulder in a stiff clump. It stank of mud and the water of the hot springs, redolent with sulfur and another scent, foul and heavy, that she had never smelled before.

The skin of her face felt tight and warm, and when she raised her hand she felt dried mud crusted on the left side of her face. She scraped at it with her short fingernails, and when she sniffed underneath them, the strange smell was there too.

 _It's death. It's all over me._

Fear and disgust swelled in her. She bit back bile and knew she would never step foot in a hot pool again.

Sansa limped to the fire and added more wood, then saw that in the next room someone had left her a bath. It was only lukewarm, but she tore the shift from her body and threw it on the floor at once.

A frenzy of scrubbing followed, but the horrible smell only seeped into the air and blossomed, and even soap did not cover it. Sansa held back vomit the entire time, and finally she left the bathing room, still naked, and took up her flagon of cold, sweet drinking water. She poured herself a cup and then carefully trickled the rest into her long hair to rinse it.

After she dried herself, she put on a long, ivory nightgown and sat before the fire with her comb. Her hair was a dreadful snarl, and she worked out the tangles from the bottom up. She tried to think of nothing as she worked, but her unwilling mind showed her flashes of yesterday's dead over and over again: Thoros of Myr's gaping mouth; Beric Dondarrion's faintly accusing gaze, distorted by its mask of water; Jon's frozen face and the awful way his cloak had stuck to his skin until she ripped it away.

By the time the knots were gone and her hair was almost dry, the great hole within her hurt as much as it had earlier, pulsing with a pain that made her physical aches feel like nothing. This inner wound had not healed while she slept at all. The Stranger was no longer lurking over her shoulder; he had crawled right into her body and settled there, grinning.

 _Bran and Arya and Jon are alive,_ she told herself again, but their lives were not even the thinnest veil between herself and despair.

The stench of death wafted over her again, brought from the bathing room by some errant draft, and she dropped the comb. It hit the stone floor with a clatter.

Sansa could not bear her chambers another moment; she could hardly stand to be in her own skin. She rose and marched out of her rooms, not even pausing to catch up a cloak on her way out.

The family wing of the keep was deserted in the dead of the night, and her bare feet made no sound on the warm stone floors. She wrapped her arms around her middle tightly and went to the room next to hers, which had been Arya's.

No fire burned in the hearth, and the utter darkness of the chamber told her that her sister was not there. She closed the door and padded down the hall to Bran's room.

This time the chamber was occupied. The fire burned low, but her brother's auburn hair glinted from the bed. When she drew closer she saw that the girl Meera was curled up next to him, her back nearly touching his arm and her curly hair spilling out from under the furs. She snored softly. Next to her, Bran lay on his back.

His eyes were open, but showed only white. _He is far away._ Sansa would have climbed into the bed and curled up next to him, had someone not already beat her to it. Instead she bent, kissed his forehead, and left him to his work.

Two guards stood watch outside Jon's chambers, which had once been Robb's. She did not know them, and ignored them utterly as she stepped between them and put her hand on the latch. They did not try to stop her. Perhaps they knew she had a right to be there, or felt that a barefoot girl in a cream nightgown was little threat. Either way, she entered Jon's chambers without resistance.

His fire still burned brightly, and so many candles were set around the room that it was nearly as bright as day. Jon lay on the bed, the furs pushed down to his waist in the overly warm air. Arya curled around him, her cheek resting against his bare shoulder. Both were fast asleep.

Sansa approached the bed and saw the large white bandage wrapped around her brother's ribs. _The maester must have sewn him up._

Even in slumber pain was written across Jon's face; despite his warrior's physique, he looked fragile. Arya's hand rested on his chest, and his fingers clutched hers.

 _She was here for months, and never said a word._

Sansa studied the sister she had not seen in years. Arya had grown into her long face, and her sister saw a beauty there that she had never anticipated when they were children. The black hair was tousled, and tumbled gracefully about her shoulders. Her eyebrows turned up in the middle, giving her a slight look of vulnerability. In sleep, Sansa's sister looked as innocent as a child.

 _She let me think she was dead._ Sansa did not understand the magic that had allowed Arya to show a different face to the world, or why she would hide so long in Winterfell without revealing herself to two of the people who loved her most. She thought of all the nights they had slept in the same bed, and a new pain stabbed into her, that her sister had accepted the comfort Sansa had given, while withholding the precious gift of information that would have brought her great relief.

 _I taught her to knit._ She did not understand why this particular memory hurt her so.

Sansa looked down at her brother and sister. Their pale skin and dark hair mingled together as each clung to the other, and Sansa knew there was nothing for her there. She would not find comfort, or give it. _They have each other._

She thought wistfully of the day that Jon had told her he tried to find her lemons. Her brother's love for her felt faint and faded, like an old banner, and her sister could not have much feeling for her, to have let her suffer so. Sansa left her siblings, feeling worse than she had before entering the room.

In the hallway she stood, not knowing where to go. She could not bear to go back to her rooms and spend the night alone, even if the stench of death had dissipated. Aching with loneliness, she let out a sigh that was nearly a sob, and behind her heard the scrape of a leather boot against the floor. She had forgotten the guards outside the door.

At once, she began to walk away, feeling their eyes on her back. _I must have looked like a madwoman, standing there._

Her feet took her toward the stairs leading to the lower levels, and she let them carry her without much thought. She felt almost like a shade; she had visited her siblings, but they had not seen her. _I didn't know it would hurt so much, to be a ghost._ Sansa hugged her arms more tightly around herself, trying to squeeze away the hollow feeling inside her.

 _There is a person in this castle who wants me._

The thought was a quiet one, rising like a bubble from the depths of her soul, and she paused upon the stair. She turned the idea over, but the objections that came to her felt tired and insincere, as false as the honor of a knight punching his fist into the belly of a young girl.

For the third time, she went to him. The frightened part of her that could bear no more pain said that he would reject her again, but she ignored it. She would not let him deny her this time. Another part warned that he would leave her bruised and torn, but Sansa knew better. If he did hurt her, it would not be on purpose, and he had shown her gentleness before. She kept putting one foot in front of the other until she stood before his door.

This time she did not knock, but opened the door and slipped inside. She locked it behind her, and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dim room. The fire was nearly burned out, and she navigated the obstacles in the room carefully in the near darkness, until she reached the hearth.

Sansa knelt and put more wood on the fire.

"What are you doing here?" The voice came from just behind her, rough with sleep.

Bright flames licked up the sides of the new logs, and the dry wood hissed. Sansa straightened and turned around.

Sandor Clegane sat in one of the fireside chairs. She had not seen the dark bulk of him as she passed, but it was clear he had been sleeping in the chair. She imagined him dozing a few moments before, with his chin on his chest. Next to him on the small table were the remains of a meal, accompanied by a flagon and cup.

Her shadow fell over him as she moved closer. Sansa looked down at him, and wondered what he would do if she sat on one of his long thighs and tucked her shoulder into the space between his chest and arm.

"I know what song you wanted from me," she said, moving to stand in the gap between his knees. "I've come to sing it for you."

Sansa stepped forward, reaching for him, but he caught up her wrists at once and held her away. In his tired, sleepy state it took long moments for the inevitable anger to show on his face. When his eyes did flash at her, she merely looked at him. _Your anger won't save you this time._

"That fucking song." His mouth twisted down into an ugly scowl. "You come here and say that like it was romantic. I was threatening to rape you, you little fool."

"I know."

"Why are you here?" he rasped. "Because I saved you? I didn't do shit except save my own skin." She had seen him this agitated only once before, when the night had been painted green. He shook her, but not very hard. _"You don't owe me anything."_

"I know I don't," she said, and pressed forward gently. He refused to allow it, and his thumbs dug into the flesh between the delicate bones of her wrists.

Her gaze flicked to his hands pointedly, then back to his face. The thumbs relented, and she rewarded his obedience with a small smile. When she deliberately parted her lips, his dark eyes widened, and his next words came out hoarse.

"Do you know what it was like, to stand by and watch while they… and to have you try to thank me for it…" His words trailed off, and he stared up at her. _"Why,_ Sansa?"

She thought of the day the Brotherhood first arrived in Winterfell, and the words she spoke of her debt to him. She wished, bitterly, that she had said almost anything else. They might have had a whole handful of nights together, instead of just this one, had she never spoken of debts.

"I dreamed of you in my bed," she said. His hands loosened in surprise, and she watched him search her face, looking for the lie. She took the opportunity and moved closer, winning several inches before he stopped her again.

"Don't tell me you want me," he said, but the words were almost a whisper, and carried no bite.

"I do want you," she said, and moved inexorably closer.

"I failed you. So many times. I couldn't even bring your brother back to you alive."

"It doesn't matter," Sansa whispered, taking another tiny step forward. "We're all going to die in a few days anyway."

He stared at her.

"You saw them. They'll be on us soon, even if we run. There's nothing to be done." She thought of her family, half lost to her, and the rest with no need of her. "I'd like to go to my grave with one happy memory, at least." At his stunned look, she added, "For after, when we're wights. Jon thinks they remember. I'd like to remember you, when we're cold and blue. Perhaps we'll walk together."

"What the fuck," he whispered.

One last push forward, and her hands settled on his face. His fingers were still wrapped around her wrists, but there was no force in them.

"Sansa," he said.

She bent over him, and brought her mouth close to his. His eyes were cast to the side and down, away from her. "Tell me you don't want me," she murmured.

With every word her lips brushed his.

"Look me in the eye and tell me you don't. I'll go away forever, and never bother you again." She pressed her fingers harder along his jaw, pulling. _"Look at me."_

He finally did, and she saw anguish burning there, and desire. "Don't lie to me, now," she said, and pressed her lips to the edge of his mouth, on the unburned side. "Sandor," she whispered, and moved to touch his lower lip. His jaw turned toward her a fraction, and this time he accepted her kiss.

The snapping of the fire and her own exhale were loud in her ears as she pressed into him. His mouth might have been ugly and burned, but when it opened under hers she found that none of the kisses in her life had prepared her for the taste of his. It was unmistakably, powerfully masculine, and the shock of it drew a small sound from her throat.

Sansa broke away and looked down at him. Sandor returned her gaze, his eyes dark and heated, and then his bare foot touched the back of her right calf. In one easy movement he pushed her off balance and tipped her onto his leg.

Then his hand was at her throat, just as she had once imagined, and his mouth took hers. His free hand curled around her back as their teeth clicked together. The fingers pressing against her neck slid up and into her hair. He gathered a handful in his fist; a few strands were pulled uncomfortably tight, but Sansa did not care.

Her right arm was crushed against him, and she wiggled and pulled until it was free. Her left hand stroked the coarse hairs over his thick collarbone, and her right hand slid around his side until she could stroke the long, round muscles of his back.

Sansa poured all of her anguish into this second kiss, and the union of their mouths became so ferocious she could hardly breathe. When her tongue slid along the edges of his teeth, he growled into her mouth and bent her back further. Her pain fled, forgotten, as the soft fabric of his shirt bunched in her fist.

Then he lifted her up and brought his knees together. Their kiss broke for a moment, until he let her down. She straddled him in the chair, her nightgown bunching over her knees, and reached for him at once. She reared over him and kissed him again, letting her hair fall in a curtain around their faces. His beard was damp against her fingers from their previous kisses, and her lips felt swollen.

Sansa pressed herself against his chest, and then he slid his hand under her nightgown and up her thigh. She had forgotten she was bare beneath it, and it was a shock when the back of his knuckle brushed the place between her legs. Though the touch was brief and gentle, she twitched away from him and sucked in a breath.

Her body panicked completely, remembering other touches, and convulsed in sudden fear.

Sansa clenched her teeth together. They wanted to chatter, and though she could hide that effect from him with a closed, determined mouth, she could not conceal the unwanted shaking of her limbs.

The hand he had touched her with pulled the nightgown down toward her knees, and then both hands closed around her upper arms. She looked at him and saw his gaze move over her quaking body.

"Don't stop," she said. "It's nothing."

"I won't hurt you." She had never heard his voice so low and warm.

" _I_ know you won't," she said, closing her eyes. "My body doesn't."

His thumbs rubbed her arms slowly, and after a few moments he picked her up as if she weighed nothing, and set her on her feet. Her eyes flew open, anxious that he might leave her, but he stood and drew her to him. Still trembling, she sighed as his arms went around her. The top of her head barely came to his shoulder, and she felt him drop a kiss into her hair.

His large hands rubbed up and down her back firmly, and then her arms. She leaned into him, furious at her own body.

"You're all right," he said, and with her cheek against his chest his words were a deep rumble.

They stood that way for a long time, and the placid, circular movement of his hands and the vibration of his chest as he spoke soothing words to her eventually calmed her. _No wonder his horse likes him,_ she thought, as a deep languor seeped into her and the last of the tremors left her body.

When he took her hand and drew her toward the bed, she felt as though she was floating rather than walking.

The bed was deep and comfortable, and she lay with her head on the pillow and watched as he drew the tunic over his head. His bare chest was hairier than she had guessed, and her eyes traced a few scars slashed along the pale torso. The skin of his neck and shoulders was darker where the sun had touched it. He saw her looking, and when his hands went to the laces of his breeches, she must have shown some emotion on her face, for he showed her his teeth.

"Don't look so worried," he said, mouth twitching. "Yours can stay on." Then his breeches were on the floor with his tunic, and he set his knee upon the bed. She was reminded of her dream, but in real life the the thigh was scarred. Sansa reached out and touched the hard muscle there, but he took her fingers away and pushed her hand firmly into the pillow underneath her head.

One of his knees pressed into the mattress between hers. He bent over her, and his bulk made her feel tiny, though Sansa was not a small woman. This time his kiss was thorough rather than fierce, and his hands touched her body in much the same way they had a few minutes before when she had trembled. One hand slid down her waist and over her hip, but he did not try to reach between her legs again, and he ignored her breasts so completely that she knew it was deliberate.

Her hands drifted over heavy muscles and her fingertips followed the various scars into new places. Sansa could not believe how much she delighted in the thick hair that grew over most of his body; she had always thought she liked lean, hairless young men, but found that the opposite seemed to be true. She marveled at how each part of his body was so much larger than hers; one of his thighs was as wide as both of hers.

The fire burned low and the light faded steadily, until she could hardly see him. After a while time lost its meaning, and she felt as though they had been kissing and touching each other for days, or weeks, or decades. She could feel her heartbeat pushing her blood through her body with every beat; she felt it pulse in her fingers, and her toes. It rose up just under her skin and washed it an unseen pink in the darkness.

In her distracted state, it was a very long time before she understood why he was content to touch only the innocent parts of her body, and why his mouth was so gentle against hers. He wanted the choice to be hers, not just to prevent her fear from rising again out of the painful past, but for his own sake, that he could know her desire was real.

 _I must lead, tonight._

His fingertips were spread along her jaw. She curled her fingers around his and drew them down her neck slowly. When their hands crossed her collarbone, his mouth paused in its kiss. She gently placed his hand on her breast, and neither of them breathed the first time his thumb brushed her nipple through the fabric of the nightgown.

She had come here willing to endure an act that had only ever brought pain, in return for the comfort of his desire and his arms, not knowing that sacrifice had never been required. _If I wanted him just to hold me, all I ever had to do was ask._ It was too late to take that path, but she was glad of it, for she had learned something valuable about both of them.

 _He loves me,_ she thought, as his hand left her breast and sank into her hair. His kiss deepened and became more urgent for a few moments, but too soon he remembered himself, and became tranquil again.

She had not been old enough to have hopes for her marriage bed—or even understand it—before the Lannisters had stolen the dream of marriage from her and twisted it. Ramsay's brutality had stamped out the idea of desire completely; she had thought the flesh between her legs good for little; at best a means to bring forth children, at worst it was a vulnerability that could bring her great pain.

The nightgown chafed. When she thought of being rid of it, of having his hands on her nude body, she let out a tremulous breath and pushed at his chest. He drew back from her immediately, giving her enough space to sit up. Her forehead brushed against his chest, and she touched his collarbone with her mouth before drawing the nightgown over her head and shoving it to the bottom of the bed with her foot. When she lay back down, his palm flattened on her bare stomach. Then it moved up, sliding between her breasts and to her throat in one long sweep. She heard his own uneven breath before he kissed her again.

She had been wrong; her body had been brutalized, but not broken. She knew what the ache low in her belly meant. At best, her hopes had been for there to be no pain, but her body was awake and thrumming, and for the first time, she dared to think of more.

Sansa pushed herself up onto her elbows for a moment and kissed him hard. Then she pulled back, wishing she could see him in the darkness. She took his hand from her throat and drew it down again, lower than she had before, to show him what he had wrought between her thighs.

For a few moments, his body went still, apart from the slow slide of one finger. Then the hand retreated, and the knee between hers became two. She slid her heels up his legs and took his face in her hands.

"Please, Sandor," she whispered.

He took her words for a command. This new touch, not made with hands or mouth, was even gentler than the others. His cheek rested against her hair, and his breath came harsh and fast, though he could not have been exerting himself at all. The slowness of his movements was at odds with the building pressure in her body, and when he stopped altogether, a small cry of frustration left her.

"I can't…" he muttered into her hair.

"Don't stop," she begged. He did not obey her, but his hand slid between their bodies and his thumb touched a place that made her writhe. He stroked her there, again and again, until she lost herself and shattered around him, gasping and stunned. _I had no idea,_ she thought, as her body trembled.

Then his mouth came down on hers, fierce and hard, and both of his hands plunged into her hair. For a few moments, he showed her the full force of his strength, and then he came undone as well.

Afterward, she lay with her head on his chest and listened to the steady beat of his heart. One of his arms curled around her, and the other toyed with a curl of her hair. Occasionally his fingers would lift and stroke her arm, or her cheek, as if he had to reassure himself that she was real.

Sansa herself was filled with a great, peaceful lassitude. His slow heartbeat under her ear was the second best sound she had ever heard, after the ragged sound of her name on his lips a few minutes before.

The empty, dreadful feeling that had consumed her earlier was almost entirely gone. It was easy for her now, to set aside her hurt over her family. Someone loved her for herself, not for blood or duty, and it made all the difference.

Lovers were supposed to whisper delightful things to each other at a time like this, she supposed, but Sandor Clegane was silent. She could not imagine him saying romantic words to declare his love, and they were not necessary, not when he made his feelings clear with every touch.

What she herself felt was sweet, but she did not think it was love, and did not know how to give voice to it. Given time, she suspected it could grow into something enduring and strong. But their days were numbered; the bloom would be killed by winter, and would not have the chance. It would have to be enough to be at his side until the end; that was sweet too, though bitter.

Sansa drifted off to sleep in Sandor's arms, having said nothing at all.


	9. Four Starks

Chapter 9: Four Starks

The muted scrape of metal at the door did not wake her, but the sudden loss of Sandor's warmth did. The heavy arm around her lifted away, the chest at her back retreated, and the legs against hers vanished. Cool air washed over her where once he had touched her, coaxing goose pimples from her skin.

The bed dipped, and Sansa rolled into the depression his body left behind. She burrowed under the furs, not yet ready to leave the warm nest they had made. Robb had been in her dream, whole and windswept from the ride home, and she wanted nothing more than to wade back into the sweetness of sleep, where she could return his smile and pretend he was not long dead.

When she knew that she would not descend into slumber again, she grieved. _I hardly ever dream of him._

The quiet scratching sound came again, and this time she recognized that it was unnatural; someone sought entry and did not wish to knock.

Sansa's eyes snapped open and fixed upon the door. She sat up, her hair spilling around her bare shoulders, clutching the furs to her chest.

On the other side of her, she heard the rustle of cloth, and turned her head in time to see Sandor hitch his breeches over his hips. He glanced at her as he laced them, his expression unreadable, but the sound came a third time and his gaze moved to the wooden door.

A long, wicked knife gleamed on the bedside table, and he caught it up before striding across the room on bare feet.

One yank and the door was open. Around the bulk of Sandor's body she could not see their visitor's face, but the slender sword tucked through a belt loop told her enough. _Needle._ Sansa thought of her nightgown, and stretched questing toes toward the foot of the bed.

"Why do none of you Starks know how to knock?" Sandor growled. "Was your septa fond of drink?"

Sansa's foot touched the crumpled nightgown and she threw the furs over her head. She gripped the garment with her toes and drew it to her hand.

"Wolves don't knock," came the answer. "Is she here?"

"Is who here?" Sandor said, sounding bored.

It was no good; the nightgown was a crumpled mess. She fumbled with it, but without light could make neither heads nor tails of it.

"Don't pretend; it doesn't work on me. Let me in."

"No."

Sansa heard a grunt and the clatter of the knife hitting the floor, and her head emerged from under the furs in time to see Arya dart around him. Sandor grimaced, pressing the heel of his hand to the center of his chest. "Little wolf bitch," he said.

The covers were tucked under her arms and she nearly had the nightgown sorted out, but it was far too late. Sansa watched as her sister's eyes took in the bed, her bare shoulders, and her mussed hair.

The dark eyebrows drew together, but Arya said nothing.

Behind her, Sandor retrieved his knife and leaned against the door, rubbing his chest.

"Arya," she said, with as much dignity as she could muster. Finally the nightgown was turned the correct way, and she ducked her head into it, wriggling, and hoped she wasn't giving her sister too much of a show.

When her head popped out of the neck of the gown, Arya said, "What did you do to her _face?"_

 _What's wrong with my face?_ She touched her chin; the skin there felt sensitive.

She met Sandor's gaze over Arya's head. _When I met him, he had the angriest eyes I'd ever seen._ Now it was like a different person looked at her; someone steady and strong.

"We'll have to powder that, you're all red." The dark-haired girl looked around the room. "Where's your cloak? Bran wants us."

"Arya," she said.

"We're leaving later, we're to ride at night. They only attack then." Arya got on one knee and looked under the bed.

"Arya," Sansa said again. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and pulled the nightgown down past her knees.

Her sister let the bed curtains fall and glanced up at her. Sansa could see the reluctance in the awkward movement of her body as she stood. _She expects me to ask questions. To chastise her._ The gray eyes were wary and unhappy. They flicked to the side and down, and she understood at once that her sister was very aware of Sandor's presence behind her.

 _I swore to myself that if I saw her again I would tell her at once, that I would not wait._

She stood and pulled her sister's stiff, unyielding body into an embrace.

"I've wanted to tell you for so long, how sorry I am," Sansa whispered into her ear. Her fingers curled around around a bony shoulder. "For lying to King Robert. About what happened at the river, with Joffrey and Nymeria and your friend."

Arya's silky hair brushed against her cheek. "Our direwolves, both lost—because of me. And I blamed you for it. I was so selfish and stupid, so sure I was right. But I wasn't. I'm truly sorry."

Sansa put her at arm's length and looked, but her sister's face showed no hint of the feelings behind it. After a few moments, Arya half-glanced behind her, toward Sandor.

"Do you have a spare cloak?" the girl said over her shoulder.

Sansa bowed her head. _Perhaps she just doesn't wish to speak in front of him,_ she thought, but an echo of the hurt from the evening before shivered through her nonetheless. She watched Sandor drop gracefully into a squat and rummage through his saddlebags, and as she looked at him the cold feeling passed.

He found what he was looking for, a plain, dark green cloak, and came to her. Sansa let him swing it around her shoulders. It was more than long enough to cover her bare toes, and the hood hid most of her face.

 _This is the third time he has given me a cloak,_ she thought, and looked up at him.

"You'll ride with us later?" Sansa asked.

"Yes," he said, pushing her hair under the cloak. His thumb brushed her cheek, and her hand rose of its own accord and wrapped its fingers around his heavy wrist.

"We need to go," Arya said, pointedly.

Sansa sighed and let her hand drop. When she stepped around him to join her sister, she did not fail to see the roll of her eyes. _You should have knocked, if you didn't want to see,_ she thought, and was almost glad to feel her temper rise.

In the hallway, a chilly silence fell between them. She kept her eyes on the floor, marking each step. The hood of the cloak blocked Arya from her view, and she was glad of it.

As they reached the stairs to the family wing, Sansa said, "I hope he's off that list of yours." She set her foot upon the step and climbed, indifferent to her sister's silence.

The corridor of the family wing was empty, and she looked forward to being in her own room again. She hoped the smell was gone.

"They would have killed the direwolves in King's Landing no matter what," said Arya suddenly.  
"At least on the kingsroad one was able to get away."

Sansa stopped at her chamber door and depressed the latch. She stood in the doorway, torn between telling her sister to go away and offering a kinder response.

"Do you think Nymeria's alive?" she said eventually, as she stepped into her room.

Arya followed her inside. "She is. I dream of her all the time."

 _I dream of the dead almost every night._ It never made any of them alive; not her mother, or her father, or her brothers, or Lady. She sat on a chair, comb in hand, and began tugging at her hair.

Arya must have seen the doubt on her face. "Nymeria's _alive._ Here, let me do that."

"Then she's the last one," Sansa said, as her sister snatched the comb from her hand. She thought of the day the boys brought home the pups. The wolf she would later name Lady had sweetly licked the fluffy face of one of her littermates, and that was how she had known that the girl pup was meant for her. "They're all gone, and most of our family, too. I sometimes wonder if we're cursed."

"We might be," Arya said, gently tugging at a tangle. "Maybe one of our ancestors did something bad, and the gods are punishing us."

"Our lord grandfather was cooked in his own armor. Whose sin was he paying for?"

"Don't know. I feel sorry for whoever has to pay for mine."

Sansa laughed. "You're fifteen. It can't be that bad."

But Arya looked solemn. "You don't know."

Sandor had said nearly the same words to her, not long ago. _You don't know what I've done_. _What I am._

She waited, but Arya did not offer more. The tangles were gone from her hair, and her sister had not pulled it even once. Sansa braided it into a thick rope, then lifted her chin when Arya appeared in front of her with a pot of powder and a brush.

"He told me you killed people," Sansa said. The brush paused in its sweeping, and Arya's eyes met hers for a moment before moving back to her chin. "I killed people, too."

This time it was Arya who looked doubtful.

"I did. I fed my husband to his own dogs. Ask Jon if you don't believe me."

"So that's what that meant."

"What?"

"The letter, from the Hound. Where he said he liked the story of the last man to cross you."

"You read my letters?"

"Of course. I had to know what was going on, didn't I?"

"But they were locked up!"

"Not very well. I could have picked that lock with a spoon."

"Arya," she said, feeling scandalized. "It's not polite to break into people's things and read their letters."

"I know," her sister said, gesturing with the brush. "But I had to. And besides, I killed Littlefinger for you, doesn't that make up for it?"

"You didn't kill Petyr," Sansa said.

"Yes, I did."

"No, you didn't," she said. "He fell from his horse—"

"How do you think his horse slipped—"

" _I smothered him with a pillow."_

"You could've just waited, he would've died on his own," she said scornfully. "And if he didn't, I would've taken care of it. You didn't have to do anything."

"How was I supposed to know that? I didn't know you were here!"

They glared at each other, and after a few moments Arya began to look sheepish. "That's true, I guess," she admitted.

She felt the corners of her mouth turn up. Arya smiled back at her for a moment, before her eyes dropped. Her sister looked hesitant, as though she was considering saying more. As badly as Sansa wanted to know what had happened to her, she knew better than to ask. So she waited, and tried to look kind.

But when Arya spoke she only said, "He is. Off the list, I mean." The brush in her hand smoothed over Sansa's chin very gently. "I swear it."

* * *

Two soldiers stood guard in the hallway outside Jon's chambers. The Maid of Tarth lingered there as well, and her eyes raked Sansa from head to heel so violently when she noticed her lady's approach that she was very glad for the powder pot.

Podrick Payne waited as well, a little to the side. As usual, he stared at the floor, but his posture was stiff and his lips pressed together in a firm line. Sansa felt bemused at the sight of anger on the face of one so gentle, until she noticed her sister's matching frown and averted gaze. Then she remembered Miri on the battlements, holding the squire's hand, and she felt her own mouth tighten. _That was not kind of her,_ she thought.

None of them tried to speak to the two Stark women, and the blast of heat that pressed against her face when she stepped into the room made Sansa wish she had not already dressed for winter riding.

Her brothers sat in chairs before the roaring fire, and Meera Reed hovered uncertainly over Bran's shoulder. His look was warm, and the girl offered Sansa a hesitant smile, which she returned.

Jon did not look at all; he stared into the flames as if they were the only thing he ever wanted to see again.

"Four Starks in one room," said Bran. "It has been long and long."

His solemn words seemed to rise into the air and unfurl like a summoning. For a moment the room felt crowded, as though their lost family stood in the gaps between the living siblings. Sansa could almost feel the presence of the Starks who had died, and for a moment thought she heard the click of direwolf nails on the floor; but when she looked around in startlement nothing was there. _It was only the fire popping,_ she told herself.

"Come and sit, sisters. We have little time, and I have news."

Arya chose the chair next to the king's; she drew her knees up and hugged them. Like her brother, she gazed into the fire, but where Jon's expression was distant and grim, Arya's was almost dreamy. _She is happy,_ Sansa thought, as she lowered herself into the next chair. The fire did not interest Sansa; she turned to Bran.

"What news?"

"Some the two of you will like very much, though the first fact of it is not all that relevant to the north: Cersei Lannister is dead. King's Landing has fallen."

Sansa sighed, and when she slid her gaze to the side and met her sister's, she found Arya's dreamy look had narrowed and become joyful; her eyes glinted in the firelight, and Sansa thought she looked half-feral. Satisfaction glowed within her own breast, and she turned back to Bran with a smile.

"Glad news indeed," she said.

"Who killed her? How did she die?" demanded Arya.

"She was strangled," he said. "But as for who, there is another who should hear that tale, and we have other business first."

Arya muttered something under her breath, though Bran ignored her.

"Westeros knows a new queen. Daenerys Stormborn," he said, his eyes on Jon, "of House Targaryen. The First of her Name, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men. Lady of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm. Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, and Queen of Mereen. The Unburnt. _The Mother of Dragons."_

Jon finally tore his eyes from the fire to look at his brother. A muscle jumped in his cheek, and Sansa thought if his teeth clenched any harder they might shatter. Anger informed the set of his shoulders, and she was glad he spent his furious gaze on Bran and not her.

"Euron Crow's Eye set a snare for the dragon Viserion, hoping to steal him," said her younger brother, his own gaze serene. "He did not know that only Valyrian blood could work that magic. His horn failed, and he lost his life. But the dragon died, too, drowned in the sea. Only two remain: black Drogon, and Rhaegal, who was named for—"

"Don't," said Jon, rising out of the chair. His hands curled into fists.

"Who was named for your father."

 _Ned was our father,_ thought Sansa _._ She did not understand.

"I'm a _Stark,"_ snapped Jon, who had always protested that he was not.

"You are," agreed Bran. "And a dragon, too."

"Aunt Lyanna," gasped Arya.

And then understanding finally came to Sansa. _Rhaegar Targaryen kidnapped her, and raped her. Father knew…_ She inhaled sharply and covered her mouth with her hand. "Cousin," she said, her eyes on the man she had thought was her brother.

" _It doesn't matter,"_ roared Jon. "They're all dead: my father, the father I thought I had, my mother. It was over years ago. It changes nothing."

"It does," Bran said in a voice like steel. "Daenerys is sweeping north, she is in the Riverlands now, heading this way. You must send her terms, or we will be crushed between her army and the dead."

"Terms. There's no need for that. I'll kneel." The words should have been bitter, but Sansa saw a light in his eye, the same one she had seen when he had spoken of taking her south from the Wall, to a warm place. _He wants to wash his hands of it all, and this is his chance. No one will blame him, the north has submitted to dragons before._

"You will not. You are a warg. A _Targaryen_ warg. Your Stark blood gives you the ability, your Targaryen blood gives you the right."

All three of them stared at Bran.

"Get within reach. Claim Rhaegal. With him you have a weapon against the dead army and a shield against Daenerys both. She will not dare move against you, with a dragon's life at stake; she knows the pain of that loss too well. The north will remain free: dragons do not bow to dragons."

 _All of Old Nan's stories are coming to life,_ thought Sansa. Wargs had been a favorite among her brothers, second only to tales of deep winter and the Others. A younger Sansa would have scoffed, but she had seen the wonder of magic herself in her sister's face; if Bran said Jon was a warg, then he was.

"I don't want a dragon," Jon said.

"Jon," said Arya with barely concealed impatience. "It's a _dragon."_

"It could work," breathed Sansa. "If we had a dragon…" Hope flared inside her, as hot and powerful as the dragonsbreath of her imagination, and the thought that they might actually live was so stunning that she hardly noticed the cool look Jon cast her way.

"I'm not the only warg here," he said, but the light in his eye was nearly gone; duty was wrapping its chains around him again; he slumped in the chair. "You're better than I am. You do it."

"I'm not a Targaryen," Bran smiled. "I don't know if I even could. Besides, I won't be there."

Arya frowned. "Where will you be?"

"Here."

"What do you mean, 'here?' Aren't you coming with us?" Sansa heard her voice go high, and swallowed.

His look was gentle, and she did not like it. "There must always be a Stark in Winterfell."

"That's just a saying," said Arya.

"No. It's much more than that."

A tense silence grew in the room. Sansa's imagination showed her Bran propped against the heart tree in the godswood, alone, watching the dead creep toward him between the sentinel trees and soldier pines. _He still won't be able to walk, after. He'll drag himself by the arms, when they turn him._ The thought was too much. _I couldn't bear to live, if it means Bran dies._

"Then let me stay," she said. Sansa had spent the last few days expecting to die, and live again, chained by the Night King. It was not so difficult to set hope for her own life aside knowing that a dragon might save the rest of those she loved. "I'm not a warg, and I don't control any magic; I'm the least valuable. Let it be me who stays, if someone must."

Bran shook his head. "There is work to be done here, and I am the only one who can do it."

"What work?" she said. She stood, and her split riding skirts whirled around her legs. "The work of dying? Do we come together after _years_ of suffering to have only these few hours?" Her hands clenched into fists at her side. "You told me once that you knew we would see each other again. Tell me now: if we leave you, _will we meet again?"_

Bran looked at her with love and pity on his face, and Sansa hated him at that moment, for the answer she knew he would give.

"I cannot say."

"We could just tie him to a horse and _make_ him come," Arya said. "It's not like he could fight us."

"Leave it," said Jon. He was staring into the fire again. "It's his choice."

"It is," agreed Bran. "And you could not fight _me."_ His eyes rolled back into his head, and Sansa heard a gasp from Arya. When she looked, her sister was shaking in the chair with gritted teeth, her own eyes showing white. A trembling hand rose from her knee, and mussed her own hair. Then her body relaxed, and her eyes looked normal again.

Arya glared at her younger brother.

Bran laughed, and for the first time he sounded like the child he had been in Sansa's memory. _I must remember this,_ she told herself. _It may be the last time I hear my brother's laugh._

The sound defeated her; her resistance melted away like icicles in a spring rain. She lowered herself back into her chair as Bran gestured and Meera bent over him. Sansa did not hear what he murmured to her, but the girl slipped from the room.

A few moments later, the door opened again. It was not Meera, but Brienne of Tarth who stepped into the room. The tall woman looked at the four Starks with their faces all turned to her, then gave a low bow.

"Lady Brienne. Welcome," said Bran.

"My lord," she said. 'My ladies. Your Grace."

Her brother gestured at the chair next to him, and the Maid of Tarth made her way around the ring of chairs and took her seat. She huddled in the chair, and kept her eyes downcast.

"My lady," Bran said. "We have news that you will want to hear. Cersei Lannister is dead. A new queen has conquered the south."

The woman's head snapped up, and she looked at Bran with wide blue eyes. "What happened?"

"Cersei spent months placing caches of wildfire all around the city: in the slums of Fleabottom; under houses and stables and taverns; even under the Red Keep itself." The inflection of Bran's words was odd, as though he was quoting someone. "When Mad King Aerys's daughter stormed the gates, Ser Jaime Lannister begged her to surrender. Instead, she told her Hand to burn them all, and let Daenerys Targaryen be the queen of ashes. I think you can guess what happened next."

"Jaime," whispered Brienne. Her face went white, and her hand rose to cover her mouth.

"Queenslayer," Bran agreed.

"Does he live?"

"For now, though he wears chains. The queen's Hand—his brother—ordered him confined in King's Landing. Queen Daenerys had other, more pressing matters to deal with at the time. At some point, of course, she will return, and even I cannot tell you what she will decide to do with her father's killer then."

 _His brother. Tyrion is the Hand of the Queen._ It was odd to think that she might soon see her first husband, if Jon met with Queen Daenerys to discuss terms. The thought was not a happy one; Tyrion had not been cruel, but she had no desire to ever spend another moment in his company.

Immersed in her own thoughts, she had not noticed Brienne leave her seat. She stood tall before her, and for once showed no signs of awkwardness. In Sansa's experience, the Maid of Tarth disliked making eye contact and avoided it whenever possible, but her pretty blue eyes were clear and calm, and met her own without any hesitation.

The tall woman knelt before her. Brienne unbuckled her sword from its belt, and looked down at the pommel of Oathkeeper. As Sansa watched, the Maid of Tarth rubbed her thumb over the golden lion's mane, and then laid scabbard and sword at Sansa's feet.

"My lady," she said. "I swore to shield your back and keep your counsel. I swore to give my life for yours if it was necessary. It has been an honor serving you; your kindness has meant more to me than I can say. But I owe a debt to another. I don't know if I can save him, but honor compels me to try. I fulfilled my oath to your mother: both her daughters are alive and returned to Winterfell. Now I ask you to release me from my vows to you."

Sansa glanced at Bran, who nodded.

"You've served me well, Brienne. If this is what you wish, go in peace. If a time ever comes when you have need of me, I am at your disposal."

"Thank you, my lady. Oathkeeper—"

"Must stay," said Bran.

"I know." Brienne nodded. "You have need of it." Her blue eyes gleamed with wetness, and Sansa guessed how hard the moment was for her.

"You may take whatever supplies you feel you need for your journey south," said Bran. "And we will give you a writ of safe passage. It will get you through Moat Cailin safely. In return, we ask that you consent to carry a letter to Queen Daenerys from the King in the North. "

"I will. I swear it." She stood and raised her eyes from the sword. Sansa saw no fear in her face, only determination. "If you'll send for me as soon as it's ready… I'd like to leave at once."

When she was gone, Sansa bent over and picked up the sword. The tooled scabbard was as fine as the pommel. _The Lannisters do nothing by halves._ She pulled the sword out a few inches and looked at the ripples in the steel.

"The remains of Ice," she murmured. The red sheen of the blade still offended her, for all that the sword had been wielded in her service for some time.

"Who will carry it?" said Bran.

"Someone loyal," said Jon. "Tormund, or someone from the Night's Watch. I'll think on it."

"No," said Sansa. "This is Stark steel, whatever it looks like now, and sworn to defend its daughters. He who defended us will carry it." She looked up from the red gleaming of the metal. A faint smile played about Bran's mouth, and Arya looked thoughtful.

When she met Jon's gaze, her stomach sank. This time she could not ignore his cold look of dislike. _He is angry with me. Very angry._

"Add Widow's Wail to your terms," she said. "After the war we'll hire a master blacksmith, and reforge our family's sword."

Jon grunted and turned back to the fire. Sansa felt uneasy; she did not understand his hostility toward her. She looked away from his rigid profile, pushed the blade back into the scabbard, and stood.

"Are you not staying?" said Bran. "Meera is fetching food."

"No." Leaving Bran's presence in the last few hours he might ever be near her was the last thing she wished to do, but she did not know if she could bear to receive another accusing look from Jon just yet. "Best to settle this now. I'll return before we ride."

* * *

Sandor's room was vacant when she arrived. She thought of waiting for him, but her stomach was painfully empty and she could not recall when she had last eaten.

Climbing the stairs back to her room, Sansa was grateful for Valyrian steel's lightness; a normal sword's weight would have been been a considerable burden, and she was already very tired.

Her chambers were just as she had left them. She stood just inside the door and breathed in gently. The awful smell that had permeated the air the night before seemed to be gone. After setting Oathkeeper onto the chest at the foot of her bed, she checked her reflection in the murky glass atop her vanity.

The skin around her eyes looked red and dark, despite the powder. _I look as exhausted as I feel. I should eat, and try to sleep a little, if we are to ride all night._ She took up her gloves for the walk across the courtyard, and settled the hood of her cloak over her hair.

Outside, the sky was dull and gray. The air was a little warmer than it had been when the Wall's defenders rode home, but snow still dusted the ground and a few flakes flew with the gusting wind.

The courtyard was full of wagons. Soldiers and wildlings and black brothers crossed and recrossed the flagstones, loading the waiting wagons with sacks, barrels, and oddly shaped packages. She supposed they would strip Winterfell of nearly every scrap of food and fodder for the journey.

Sansa opened the kitchen doors and stepped into heat and noise. The ovens were all fired, and a dozen young men manned them, pulling trays of hard bread out and preparing the next ones. The cooking soldiers were so intent on their tasks that they did not notice her.

Six cauldrons hung in niches along the wall, bubbling with the inevitable stew. Someone had stacked trencher breads high along a block bench nearby, and Sansa helped herself. She considered trekking back across the courtyard to eat her meal in privacy, but her stomach growled at the smell of food. _It's warm here, and no one has noticed me anyway._

She slipped around the bench and found a small stool to sit on. The stew was swimming with carrots and onions, and for once the meat was fresh and abundant. _They must have slaughtered overnight._ She would have wolfed it down had it not been so hot.

As she ate, she listened to the sounds of the kitchen: the snapping of the fire, the squeal of the oven hinges, the clatter of pans, the voices of young men joking with each other. A queer sense of invisibility stole over her; she was mostly hidden by the burdened table, and knew that the men would not have spoken so naturally if they had known of her presence. _I wonder what it's like to have friends,_ she thought, as a wave of laughter rolled around the kitchen. She'd had a friend once, Jeyne Poole, but could no longer remember what it felt like.

The warmth of the air and the meal inside her drew her eyelids down, and she drowsed for a few moments, feeling oddly safe. Arya's face swam into her mind's inner vision, and she thought that perhaps she understood a little better why her sister had chosen not to reveal herself in Winterfell.

Only when she dropped the fork onto the floor did she realize that sleep was rolling over her, implacable and unconcerned with her location. Her stomach was very full, and her eyelids felt as heavy as iron. Little red sparks seemed to float at the corners of her vision, and she stood and thrust the wayward fork haphazardly on the table.

The air outside failed to revive her. The rushing wind swept the warmth from her without refreshing her; she clutched her useless cloak close and staggered toward the keep. Her eyes burned, and felt grainy.

Her weariness was so pervasive that when the toe of her boot landed on the uneven join of two flagstones, she would have tripped over the tiny obstacle and fallen had a strong hand not seized her arm.

Bewildered, she looked at the hand, and then realized it was Sandor beside her. Neither of them spoke. Sansa dragged herself upright, and they went forward together.

"My room," she said when they were inside the castle doors. He did not relinquish her arm, and she was grateful for its strength as they walked together up the stairs that had once hardly attracted her notice, but now seemed almost insurmountable. Her knee ached, and with each step pain shot up her thigh and down her calf.

At last she leaned against her own door. Instead of pushing, she let her weight open it. She half-fell into the room and limped toward the nearest chair, leaving the door for Sandor to close. She put her elbow on the table and leaned her head on her hand. Her eyes closed at once.

Sansa heard the scrape of the chair next to hers as he pulled it away from the table. His leather armor creaked as he sat.

"How was the family reunion?"

She grimaced, and shook her head a little. What should have been joyful had been sad, unsettling, and brief. She would have told him how different it had been from what she had imagined all those years spent apart from them, but she was too tired.

"Brienne's leaving," she said instead.

"Going south."

"Yes." She sighed, and opened her eyes to look at him. Sandor had pushed up his sleeve, and held a leather vambrace in his hands. She watched him adjust the twist near one of the eyeholes until the laces lay flat. "She's not coming back."

He grunted, and slipped the sheath back over his forearm. His eyes flicked up and met hers. They were unreadable, and not for the first time she wished that she knew what he was thinking. _He isn't guarded, exactly. It's just that I have no idea how his mind works._

"So, will you?" she said, not knowing any other way to put it.

"Will I what?" He yanked at the laces and tied them off, flexing his forearm to make sure of a good fit.

"Be my shield. I need one, you know."

"Do you? I thought we were all about to die."

"Apparently not," she said, wondering if it was at all possible that he was teasing her. "Or rather, maybe not. They have a… plan, I suppose. An idea, at least."

Sandor leaned back in his chair and studied her. "You know what happened last time I was someone's shield."

"It was only the fire," she said, before realizing that he might take offense to her words. But he looked the same as ever: stern, and slightly irritated. "And Joffrey was a shit," she added.

"True enough, but we both know there's fire where we're headed."

Sansa shrugged, and stood up. Three steps took her to the bed, and to Oathkeeper. She took it in both hands and returned to him. "This time if you run, I'll run too," she said, and offered him the blade.

He took it from her, and slowly unsheathed it. The scabbard he set upon the table with hardly a glance, but he examined the steel minutely. Sansa sat back down and watched him look at the ripples in the steel. He ran his fingertips along the length of the blade, careful not to touch the edge, and she had a strong, sudden recollection of those same fingers trailing along her bare skin.

After some time he stood, and hefted the sword to judge its weight. Then he knelt, and placed it at her feet.

"I offer my services, Lady Stark," he rasped. "I will shield your back, and keep your counsel—"

"No," she said, alarmed. He'd gotten halfway through the thing before she'd realized what he was doing. "You don't have to swear."

They looked at each other, he on one knee, she wringing her hands in her lap. The thought of Sandor swearing a vow to her made her desperately sad, and she couldn't articulate why.

"I would," he said, "for you."

"I know," she said. "But—please, get up," she said wretchedly. She couldn't stand looking at him down there, with his eyes hot on hers.

He did, and sat again in his chair, frowning at her.

"I don't need a vow to trust you," she tried to explain. "And if I didn't, a vow wouldn't make me do so. Words are wind. I already know you'll do what's needed, because you always have." She knew she was babbling, but could not seem to stop. "I'll never ask you to swear, ever. For any reason. I swear it. Oh, bloody hells."

Sandor's laugh sounded like a rolling boulder, and she looked at him in astonishment. _He looks so different when he smiles,_ she thought. She admired the straight teeth in the wide mouth, and her own mouth curled up in response.

"Mad little bird," he said. "You're reeling. Time to sleep."

It was true. Sansa could not remember ever being so weary.

She stood, and her new shield helped her out of her cloak. He guided her, his hand at the small of her back, and when she climbed onto the bed he bent once more and removed her boots. The sight of him kneeling at her feet again warmed her, and she wondered how long it might be before they saw a bed again. _If only I wasn't so tired…_

Soon she was in the bed, fully dressed. She wondered if he would hold her, as he had before, but he only draped the furs over her and looked down at her.

"Kiss me," she said.

Sandor bent and placed a gentle kiss on her forehead. She closed her eyes, and thought she felt his fingers touch her hair, so lightly that she was not sure it had happened at all.

"No," she said. "Kiss me."

This time he obeyed her, and she sighed against his mouth. When he retreated, she did not bother to try and open her eyes. Her head was buzzing with exhaustion, but she still heard the scrape of the chair as he dragged it to her bedside. His hand touched hers, and the last thing she did before melting into the warm darkness of sleep was twine her fingers with his.


	10. The Barrowlands

Chapter 10: The Barrowlands

"Little bird."

That was wrong—she wasn't little at all—though she _was_ flying. High above Winterfell, Sansa soared. When she turned her head toward her fingers she found the voice had been right, at least in part: instead of arms and hands she found wings, her black feathers glinting green and blue and purple where the sun struck them.

"Wake up, Sansa."

A murder of ravens flew all around her; when she turned, it wheeled with her. Each bird reacted to her smallest movement; they shifted in unison, and together made a dark, living cloud in the sky. Below her was the godswood, and when the sun touched the red leaves of the heart tree it set them aflame.

"Sun's falling, girl."

And then Sansa was falling too, plummeting toward the frozen ground. Terror rose up in her and she opened her mouth to scream, but something warm gripped her shoulder and pulled her up. When she opened her eyes, Sandor was there, peering into her face.

"You're all right," he said.

"Mmm," she agreed, and rubbed at her eyes. She felt odd, and in her barely awake state she couldn't figure out why. Then she swallowed, and grimaced. Her throat hurt.

 _Not today,_ she thought, and felt a trickle of dismay. It would be four nights to Moat Cailin, all in the bitter cold. A sore throat wasn't just an annoyance; it was a danger.

"Sandor," she croaked, wincing at her own voice. She sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed, and shivered, feeling goose pimples rise under her clothes. Was the room cold, or was she feverish? "How long did I sleep?"

"Four or five hours." He sat on the bed beside her. His left arm snaked around her shoulders, and she leaned into his side. Then she felt fingers at her forehead. "Too warm. I'll get the maester."

He stood, and was nearly at the door before she found her voice.

"Wait," she said. "Find out where Bran is first, if you will. I need to see him—you can send the maester there."

Sandor nodded.

When he was gone she put on her boots and rifled through her drawers, searching for her spare handkerchiefs. Her head felt like it was stuffed full of wool, and the sound of the drawer's wooden runners sliding in their tracks was curiously muted.

By the time she found the fat stack of soft square cloths, she was shivering. She took up her fur-lined cloak and stuffed the handkerchiefs in one of the inner pockets before wrapping it around her. She put the hood up for extra warmth, and was considering winding the scarf around her neck as well when something touched her shoulder.

Sansa jumped, but it was only Sandor. He looked down at her with a frown.

"Sorry," she said, trying to keep her teeth from chattering. "I didn't hear you. Did you find Bran?"

"He's still in Jon's solar. We'll be going soon; I'll come up for you."

"All right," she said. That hot room sounded like paradise, and the chill in her body made her feel capable of enduring any number of nasty looks, if it meant she could be warm again.

But when she arrived at his chambers, Jon wasn't there. Bran was alone, and Sansa found that she was getting used to seeing only the whites of his eyes. She sank into the chair next to his, and thought, _Bran, come back, there's so little time left._ But the warmth seeping into her body from the room's hot air was so pleasant that their imminent parting receded in importance.

Sansa relaxed into her chair. Her eyes closed, and she was dozing, dangling over the precipice of true sleep, when Bran spoke.

"We're all wargs, Sansa."

 _Not me,_ she thought dreamily. _I'm the ordinary one._

"Our line goes back so far," he continued, and she heard soft wonder in his voice. "I can see it, Sansa, thousands and thousands of years. Starks all the way back, and the blood is so strong."

"I don't even look like a Stark," she whispered, and a sadness so profound swept through her that she felt a prickle behind her closed eyelids.

"The Tully blood touched some things," he agreed. "But underneath the core is Stark. It is steel and will never yield."

Sansa opened her eyes and looked at her brother. She took in his auburn hair and blue eyes, so like her own. _I should have been his sister, the way Arya is Jon's. It should have been me for Bran, not Meera,_ and she felt so keenly the selfishness of that thought that she hated herself. Without Meera Reed, Bran would have been all alone, the way Sansa had been all alone.

"I can't see what you can," she told him. "I can hardly see anything."

Bran smiled, and his gaze unfocused and became soft as he looked past her. "It was weakest in Robb, I think. He was older, more secure, when Grey Wind came to him. Brought up to rule, he had his birthright to guide him. It didn't need to be strong, though if it had been it might have saved him.

"Arya wasn't with Nymeria long, but the wolf is still alive, somewhere. It feels different in her. Flexible. Sometimes I see cats, with Arya, but I see the wolf, too. I see the wolf in all of us.

"In Jon it's a fire, raw and raging. He's been battling his whole life, and he's very tired." Bran's eyes focused, and he looked at her sharply. "Don't let him give up, not now when it's almost over."

"How?" she asked. "You saw how he looked at me. He doesn't even want me near him."

"You'll push him, just as you did before when he needed it." The blue eyes stayed focused on hers. "At first I thought maybe it wasn't in you at all. You had so little time with Lady. And all the trauma that came after… I thought maybe it had died in you."

"Didn't it?"

"No. I think it's locked away. It grew on its own, hidden, and bloomed in secret," Bran said. "With you, I see flowers."

"Flowers?" she said, not understanding.

"Sometimes birds, too. But always flowers."

"What does that mean?" she said, bewildered. "I could warg into plants, if I knew how?"

"Maybe, but that doesn't feel right. In you it's something else. I don't always understand what I see. But I see something."

Her first thought was that his words were a kind lie, spoken out of love. But he had to know that she didn't mind being an ordinary Stark, not really—after all, her father had been entirely unmagical as far as she knew—and it didn't _feel_ like he was lying. Perhaps it was possible that she did have some power, though she had never felt any hint of such a thing. If it was there it was hidden, as Bran said, and no use to her. Sansa didn't mind; the whole idea made her feel uneasy.

"Sandor's coming, with Maester Wolkan," Bran said, suddenly sounding younger. "They'll pour potions down your throat and fuss over you like hens. Quick, give me a hug and a kiss. These may be the last moments we have together."

"Don't say that," she said. She meant to sound severe, but his request was too genuine and sweet; her smile warped the words.

When she embraced him, his hand cupped the back of her head, and after a few moments she pulled back enough to kiss his cheek. She intended to pepper him with kisses as she had done the evening before—had it really been only a single day since then?—but as she felt his lips against her own cheek, his hand caressed her face. The fingers pushed her hair away until his thumb rested in the center of her forehead. Then it pressed down, hard.

The solar vanished.

A jumble of images passed before her eyes. She saw a man riding an elk. Black birds roosted in the trees around him, thick upon the bare branches. Two young men sparred in the garden of the Eyrie, where she had once built Winterfell from snow and sticks. _Father,_ she thought, but he was gone the next instant.

Faster and faster the pictures came. Bran fell from a tower. Lady's golden eyes looked up her. Arya kissed a man with silver hair. More came, each flicking by so quickly that she could not even register them all.

Sansa began to feel a pressure in her head, as though something was squeezing it. The queer sensation grew in intensity until she wanted to cry out— _I cannot bear it, make it stop—_ and just as she thought her head would implode, the pressure was gone.

She saw herself, walking in a wild, impossible garden.

The path was wide and sunny, bordered on each side by flowers. Every bloom she knew crowded the beds, and even more were strange to her. Sunflowers nodded here and there, and orange lilies swayed gently in the breeze, their petals lolling like dog tongues on a hot day. Winter roses stood next to odd, spiky red blossoms, their sweet and spicy scents mingling. She watched as the Sansa in the garden lifted her hand, and the flowers turned toward her, all at once, as though she had spoken a command.

The garden exploded, and she was on the floor of her cousin's rooms, looking up at her brother. She pushed herself up to her elbows, feeling weak, then sat up. She felt very strange; her forehead tingled. Sansa touched it, but the skin felt as smooth as it always had.

"What did you do to me?" Even to her own ears, she sounded frightened.

Bran looked down at her, and his head was against his shoulder, as if he was too tired to hold it upright. His smile was so faint she was not sure if it was really there, and when he answered her his eyes closed; she could hardly hear his whisper.

"I unlocked the door."

* * *

The first night was miserable. Though she longed for sleep, she had never been a good enough rider to doze in the saddle, as Sandor could and did. Sansa had taken care to wrap herself in extra layers—two pairs of hose under thick woolen socks, an extra shift, and several scarves—but even so she shivered and could not get warm. She felt every minute of the fifteen-hour trek.

They rode at a brisk walking pace, for not everyone was mounted. Jon did not wish to leave anyone behind, and Sansa knew this was not a matter of sentiment; every person who failed to survive the march would be another wight to defeat later.

Dawn was only a lightening of the gray around them. Bone-tired, she watched the ravens following the column flit silently from tree branch to tree branch, and did not realize for a long time that her ability to see them meant that day had broken.

Her horse stopped walking when its companions did, but Sansa felt no particular urge to dismount. Her eyes followed one of the ravens as it took flight and climbed high into the air, circling lazily. _It must be able to see the whole column from there,_ she thought, and could almost picture it: the remains of the Stark family and their fighters at the head; then the wildlings, who wished to be near Tormund and Jon. Behind them was the bulk of their modest army, the knights of the Vale, and finally the remains of the Wall defenders, a thin block of black brothers led by Edd Tollett.

They camped on the kingsroad itself. There was an inn half a dozen miles down the road, but only daylight mattered, and clutched in winter's fist they could expect a meager ten hours of light before darkness swallowed them again.

Sansa shared a tent with her sister. Her appetite was completely gone—she pushed away the food Sandor offered her after only a few bites—but she allowed the maester to ply her with dreamwine, and did not remember falling asleep.

The wine lived up to its name, for she dreamed vividly that night of flying back up the kingsroad to Winterfell. The trees and white, open spaces flashed by at a speed far above what even the fastest horse could achieve, and very soon she floated above the empty castle. To the north was a tall bank of white fog, and she watched it approach and touch her childhood home with a feeling of curious detachment. The castle walls split the fog neatly; Winterfell was a tall rock in a sedate stream.

Then Arya's hand was on her shoulder, and she was awake.

If the first night had been miserable, the second was torture. Her fever had deepened during her too-brief rest, and her thighs and backside were stiff and sore from the previous day's riding. Her head ached with a fierce, stabbing pain, pushing the discomfort in her throat to the background. She huddled in the saddle, Sandor to her right, Arya to her left, and their fourteen-hour ride felt like fourteen days.

When Sansa tried to dismount that morning, her legs buckled and she would have fallen if Sandor had not been there to catch her. He picked her up as though she was as light as thistledown, and carried her to the tent. Someone touched a wet cloth to her forehead; it felt as cold as ice, and she howled at the pain of it. When the maester came, she fought and lost. He poured something vile down her throat while hands held her down. When they finally left her alone she curled into a ball under the furs of her bedroll and wept.

Her rest was fitful; strange dreams plagued her and she could not tell if she was awake or asleep. "I fed his sons to him and slit his filthy Frey throat," she heard her sister say, but when she looked over her shoulder, Arya was asleep, snoring softly.

In the morning she was lucid, if not exactly herself. She no longer felt pain; her body was distant, as though she floated just above it. She stood next to her horse and leaned her forehead against its saddle while Arya and Sandor discussed the impending night's journey.

"She's too weak to ride. She'll fall."

"Stranger can carry us both."

"I don't know. Maybe we should put her in one of the wagons."

"No wagon," said Sansa, and they both turned to look at her. "You can't fight if we ride double, Sandor. Strap me to my horse."

Neither of them liked the idea, but Sansa meant to win this battle, and she did. It didn't take as much arguing as she expected, and she wondered what she must look like, that two of the most stubborn people in the world would give in so quickly to spare her the effort it might normally take to get her way.

 _They should have strapped me in the first night,_ she thought, when finally it was done. Her body and its pain were more distant than ever, and without the need to hold herself in the saddle, she was able to relax. As the hours went by she felt a rising euphoria.

"I feel wonderful," she confided to her companions, long after midnight, and could almost feel their worry rise. _They think I'm dying. If I am, I don't care,_ she thought, and laughed out loud. An old tune ran through her head, and she would have hummed it if not for her throat, which she still could not feel, but wished no harm.

They were deep in the Barrowlands this third night, passing by long rolling hills untouched by snow. The temperature dropped quickly, and as it did her giddiness slowly seeped away.

Eyes closed, she listened, as though she expected to hear some sound besides the creak of wooden wagon wheels, the trudging of boots, and the jingling of hundreds of bits of gear.

Arya was distracting her, though, and Sansa wished she would girl was stuck in a loop, cycling through deep anger, thirst for action and blood, and sharp worry so quickly that Sansa could hardly keep track of it. A deep current of frustrated impatience ran underneath it all. _It must be very tiring, feeling that way._

On her other side, Sandor was nearly her sister's complete opposite. Sansa could feel the merest thread of attention aimed at her, but the rest of him was a deep well of calm. He was sleeping very lightly, and Sansa smiled, her eyes still closed. She was very fond of Sandor Clegane.

The horn sounded from behind them, a long, mournful blast. _There it is,_ she thought in satisfaction.

The second horn blast came on the heels of the first. Its tone was somehow self-pitying, and Sansa did not have to follow the sound back to its source to know that Dolorous Edd was behind it. Everyone on the march knew what the Night's Watch signals meant, and with the wildlings on their side…

When third blast came, a miasma of anxiety drifted up from the column, a long, sour snake of dread. On both sides of her, swords slid from scabbards. The army stumbled to a ragged halt in the dark, bunching up in some places and leaving gaps elsewhere.

"The Others," she heard Arya say. Sansa felt no fear from her, only resentment that she would leave work unfinished.

"No," Sansa said, not knowing how she knew. "This is just their calling card."

"What does _that_ mean?"

"Quiet!" Sandor barked.

Sansa's horse sidled left, toward the middle of the column, and she did not correct it. When she opened her eyes, the nearest horse in front was Ser Davos Seaworth's. In the torchlight she could see the gray of his beard and the glint of his eyes as he looked back at the column.

The wind couldn't seem to decide which way it wanted to blow. It tugged at the left side of her hood, but a few seconds later pushed at the back of her head. Then they caught the sound of far-away screaming, fading in and out with the gusting of the wind.

An odd clacking sounded from just to their right, and when Sansa looked and saw the skeleton scrambling up the bank to the road, all the pieces fell into place.

 _They are raising the Barrowlands._

The gentle hills she had wondered at on her way to King's Landing had centuries' worth of dead men interred within. _They must be beyond counting._

Stranger screamed in rage and leapt forward. Before the skeleton could rise and swing the pitted sword it carried the stallion was upon it. The thing's skull was so delicate and brittle that powder puffed up around the hoof that clove it in.

The clacking came again, this time from every direction, and became a symphony of rattling bones. She wondered how many had been too frail to free themselves from the earth that bound them. _They're too old to be dangerous,_ she thought, but she was wrong.

All around her, horses screamed, terrified of the death closing in on them. Even her own garron reared and tried to bolt. It only ran a few steps before she took her left hand from the saddle's horn and shoved her fingers into the shaggy coat of its neck. There was an odd pressure in her head, and then the feeling of something flexing deep inside her mind.

The skin shivered under her glove, but the horse stood still.

She found herself neck and neck with Ser Davos, who was controlling his own mount with difficulty. Sansa looked at the animal, tossing its head and jogging in place, wanting to flee, and knew that calming it would be the easiest thing in the world; this time she didn't even have to touch the creature.

"It's not the Others," she said serenely to Ser Davos. "It's a snare. We need to keep moving; go sound the signal to march." He looked at her with his mouth agape, but she gave him a little nudge with her mind and the mouth snapped shut. He put his heels to his horse, cloak snapping as he rode for Jon.

The pressure was building in her head again, but it didn't hurt. She felt powerful, as strong as Sandor. She could feel him behind her, astride his furious horse, laying waste to the bones of the north's ancestors with the flat of her father's steel.

Years ago, in King's Landing, she had seen his face transformed during the bread riots. Then, she had been terrified of the look on his face when he killed to protect her, but now she could feel what he felt, and it was no longer something awful to turn away from.

The deep calm that she'd felt earlier was still there; he did not fear the brittle wights, and smashed them with a physical pride of doing what he was best at, what he was made to do. Every sweep of the sword, each contraction and stretch of muscle was a sensation to revel in, and he did.

Threaded through it all was a feeling of deep satisfaction and purpose. To destroy evil and protect the innocent had long been the secret, unfulfilled wish of his heart. He'd stifled it as best he could in a hard and unfair world, turned his back on it, and spat at the very thought of true justice. He had committed terrible acts, and drowned his heart in wine to endure them.

Until Sansa came along, all unknowing, her open heart the twin of his secret one. Her suffering had been the catalyst that set him free.

There was joy in his work now, and Sansa shared in it. The earlier euphoria rose, and her body felt so far away now that she did not know if she truly wept, or if it only felt like she did. The pressure in her mind from the power swelling inside was nearly unbearable. Her third eye was wide open, and if she didn't do something soon, it would kill her.

Desperate, she reached out for Sandor. With mental fingers, she touched him and took a small portion of what he was feeling into her hands. Sansa had no idea what she was doing, but some instinct guided her; she pushed her power into the piece of him that she held. It flourished and grew, like dough rising in a warm kitchen, and when she could grow it no larger she flung it over every living creature she could sense. It covered them in all of their thousands.

The screaming stopped at once. Both horses and men became quiet as her strange net sank into them. _What have I done? Have I killed them?_ For a moment, all was quiet and she did not know what she had wrought.

Then, to her relief, she heard hundreds of swords slide from their scabbards; by the noise of it, every single one that had remained sheathed when the Night's Watch horn first sounded.

A horse whickered in the distance, and then the measured sounds of battle came to her ears. She heard the dull snap of ancient metal, the grunts of men swinging swords, and the hollow crunch of old bones smashing.

Two short, sharp horn blasts came from ahead, and soon they were moving again, more slowly than before, but steadily. The horse required no input, and went with his fellows, which was just as well; she couldn't feel her body anymore at all.

The queerest sensation of being drained came over her; the power that had mounted so hotly before was spinning slowly out into those around her. Sansa did not know if the strange magic she wielded would last long enough to see them through. She slumped in the saddle, eyes closed, her world narrowed to a pinpoint as she fought unconsciousness.

At the darkest hour of the night, in bitter cold and spitting snow, the army of the King in the North went forth. The torches dipped and swung, their fitful light glinting off whirling swords. Men and horses advanced in near darkness, flinging back the fragile wights, who had for centuries rested honorably in the gentle rolling hills of the Barrowlands. Protected by the waning banner of Sansa Stark's gift, the tattered army marched south step by step, toward survival, and the dawn.


	11. Moat Cailin

Chapter 11: Moat Cailin

Exhaustion conquered Sansa eventually, but the dream that followed was so like what had come before that she never noticed the precise moment reality blurred around the edges and softened into something else.

Calm and content, her horse ambled forward, warm underneath her thighs.

The wind was cold.

With every furious, icy gust of air the old, dead bones surged forward. When it lulled, the living shoved them back, the blood in their veins pulsing hot and powerful. Back and forth they struggled, the wind blowing weaker and milder each time, until finally the men were victorious.

The air grew warm and still.

The bones fell away.

Then the horse was gone and she was in King's Landing. The day was so miserably hot that getting dressed would only mean ruining a gown with sweat stains; Sansa did not bother. In her thinnest dressing gown she stood on the balcony and watched the placid harbor. The heat amplified the stench of the city; its scent was never particularly pleasant, but just then it smelled like a corpse bloating under a gleeful sun.

The servants brought the cool bath she'd ordered. She climbed in without undressing, for her husband might be near, and he was a Lannister. Lethargic in the water, she reclined, her nightgown floating around her knees.

The bath was not cool or refreshing; somehow, it was even warmer than the air. She wanted to get up, but when she tried to move her limbs they were so heavy she could not move. Sweat trickled down her face.

"Sansa," said Tyrion. His unexpected voice was so clear and immediate that she thrashed in the tub; the kicking of her legs sprayed steaming water everywhere.

 _Too hot. He is stewing me..._

Sansa stared up at the canvas ceiling of the tent, blinking and panting. The furs upon her were thick, heavy, and damp with sweat. Sickening waves of heat undulated through her, and she scrabbled weakly at the covers, desperate for cooler air.

Her arms did not want to cooperate, and it took several attempts before she was able to fling some of the furs away. Her right leg slid from the bedroll, and her ankle flopped against the hard ground.

What little strength she had left her then, and she closed her eyes, gasping as great waves of heat rolled from her body. Her nightgown was completely soaked with sweat, and she had never felt anything more blissful than the wonderful coolness sinking into her right side.

"Not dead, after all," said Jon.

The effort to turn her head and look at him was too much, so she only moved her eyes. He sat near her on a chair, his elbows on his knees and both hands wrapped around Longclaw's grip. The point of the scabbard scraped against the ground.

Sansa licked her lips, but her mouth was so parched the effort was futile. "Was I supposed to?" she said. "Was it close?"

The king's dark eyes glittered. "Yes."

Her fingers plucked at the nightgown plastered against her torso. It parted from her skin reluctantly and made a wet little tent. She did not know which question Jon had answered.

"Water," she said. "Please, water."

After a few moments, Sansa heard movement. A gloved hand slid underneath her head; another pressed a skin against her lips. The icy water tasted like ambrosia, and the trickle of the bit that spilled down her neck felt like a friendly, cold kiss.

"I'm sorry," she said when the skin went away. Her head fell back without his hand to support it, and she opened her eyes to look up at him. The brazier was behind Jon as he knelt over her, so that his face was in shadow. "About the godswood. I had to. You know I had to."

Jon said nothing. Sansa wished he would speak; if fetching Beric Dondarrion had cost her a brother instead of saving one, she wanted to know.

The night before, she would have known. The memory of it was still strong, and Sansa reached out with her mind, remembering its odd flexion, trying to recreate it. To sense what he was feeling, and reveal the truth.

But she felt nothing, from Jon or anyone else nearby.

 _It was only a fever dream, after all._ Disappointment filled her. Had any of it been real? Had the dead risen?

 _Did we march?_

"Someday," he told her, "you'll overreach with one of your cold-hearted little schemes. You'll pull the wrong tail, thinking you know best, and they'll turn and eat you alive." The sound of his gloves creaking came to her ears. "I won't help you. Not after this."

Too dry for tears, too weak to defend herself, and not sure she was justified, Sansa could only let the words wash over her. _Bringing him back was the cruellest thing I've ever done. But we need him… we can't win without him, I know it._

"I was there too, Jon." Arya's loud voice came directly from her left, and Sansa needed no special power to know that her sister was angry.

The rest of the furs lifted away from Sansa, and she let out a sigh as the left side of her body began to cool. "I helped." Arya continued. "Are you mad at me too? The Hound helped, but you aren't treating _him_ like dirt on your boot." A small, warm hand touched Sansa's forehead. _"Bran_ helped. If you're going to be stupid, get out and do it somewhere else."

A short silence followed this speech. Then Jon rose to his feet.

"They're not far behind us," he said, indifferent to Arya's outrage. "If we're to arrive at Moat Cailin before they catch us we'll leave well before sundown."

Jon strode toward the tent entrance, putting up his sword as he went. _The Night King is close. Close enough to raise the Barrowlands around us. Close enough to raise me, if I died here._ Longclaw had been for her, and she wondered if he was disappointed there had been no need for it.

"That idiot," fumed Arya, scrambling out of their combined bedrolls. She snatched up another skin and plopped cross-legged onto the dirt close by, to help her sister drink. "I'll sort _him,"_ she muttered, but there was a tremor in her voice.

Long before Sansa's thirst was quenched, Arya took the water away. "You'll be sick if you drink too much. How are you feeling?"

"Alive," she said. Her throat wasn't as sore. "Filthy."

With her little sister's help she visited the chamber pot. They peeled the wet clothing off her, and even managed a sketchy sort of wash before tugging a clean, dry nightgown over her head. The effort exhausted her. Sansa was chilled and trembling with weakness by the time Arya got her into the other side of the bedroll, where the furs were dry.

"Don't you want me to brush your hair?" Arya said, reaching out and touching a snarl. "It looks terrible."

She huffed a little laugh and closed her eyes. "I don't care about my hair."

It felt so good to just lie there and not be in much pain. This time she knew she would get real rest, when sleep came. "How long do we have?"

"Hours, yet."

Next to her, Arya stretched out. She pressed her cheek against Sansa's shoulder.

The army around them was so quiet that their tent could have been miles from anyone else's. The only sound was the minute crackling of the fire in the brazier.

The cheek on her shoulder leaned harder, and Sansa felt the hot drip of liquid soak through the nightgown well before she heard the tiny sob.

At once she lifted her arm, and Arya rolled into her, clutching. The dark head was too heavy on Sansa's breast, crushing her, but she didn't mind. She wrapped her arms around her and held her close.

"What's the matter?" she whispered.

"Everything. You almost died, and something's wrong with Jon." A miserable, choked sound came out of her.

"I'm alive," Sansa said, rocking her. "So is Jon. It will be all right."

An small, fierce sniffle followed this. The canvas of the tent snapped in a gust of wind, and she heard a horse neigh and shuffle nearby.

Sleep pulled at her, but she resisted its call. The body against hers was still stiff with tension. Sansa already carried enough guilt where Arya was concerned; sleeping through her tears would only add to the load.

Her hand stroked the curly hair, and by degrees the limbs against hers relaxed. A pattern of checks emerged behind Sansa's eyelids and she watched them dance, feeling suspended in time. Her breathing slowed and deepened. Next to her, Arya sighed, and Sansa thought that perhaps the moment was ripe.

"I dreamed you killed Walder Frey," she murmured.

The dark mop of hair twitched. Sansa smoothed it away from her sister's face and tucked it behind the small ear. It was surprisingly silky under her fingers.

"It was lovely," she added.

When Arya spoke, her voice was barely a shiver in the air. "The hardest part was not eating for three days. I didn't want to break guest right."

 _All that horror and pain. And he's finally, finally paid for it._ A smile stretched her face and she pulled her closer.

"Did he suffer?" she asked.

The story spilled out in a few quick, whispered words, and Sansa savored each one. Her mind's eye saw the pale flesh in the golden pies, and the look of fear and surprise on the old man's face. She saw blood rushing out of a grizzled neck, and sighed with satisfaction.

"I painted a direwolf on the high table in his blood—I wanted them all to know it was a Stark," Arya finished.

Sansa pressed a long, hard kiss against the crown of her head.

"You darling," she murmured.

"I thought you wouldn't like me anymore, if you knew," said Arya, her fingers fiddling with the heavy stitches on the sleeve of Sansa's nightgown.

"That's not true," she said. "Now I love you more than ever."

"You're going to love me a lot. I've killed _loads_ of people."

"I believe you," said Sansa, with a smile, and Arya laughed.

 _My family is coming back to me,_ she thought. The warmth enveloping her now was neither too little nor too much. Her body relaxed, until her limbs felt long and loose. _First Bran, now Arya. Surely Jon will too._

* * *

Sansa twisted in the saddle, rummaging through her saddlebags in search of food. Despite eating before they broke camp, she could not seem to fill the hole in her stomach. In two hours she'd worked her way through three black rounds of bread, a wide strip of smoked goat's meat, and a small package of sliced, dried apples the maester had pressed into her hand.

The horse veered sharply left. Distracted by hunger, Sansa had pulled one of the reins tight. A short squeal sounded as the garron drew too close to Stranger, and she hastily corrected her grip on the reins. When they were more or less pointed in the right direction, she looked up, feeling sheepish. The black courser mouthed irritably at the flat bit in his mouth.

The rider's gaze was on her. Most of Sandor's face was hidden by his hood and a green scarf, but she could see his eyes, crinkled in what she was sure was amusement.

"Sorry," she said.

In response, his gloved hand dipped into his bags. He drew out a small package, and held it out to her. Some invisible command had Stranger stepping nearer, until she was able to take the bundle from Sandor easily.

When she untied the string she found a treasure: two sweet biscuits, slightly crumbled, and a wedge of sharp white cheese, all hard from the cold. _Where did he get this?_

Sansa looked up at him, wondering. The smile was gone from his dark eyes, but still they were on her. A little thrill ran down her body.

The cheese snapped gently between her fingers, and she tilted it toward him, offering wordlessly to share.

Sandor's eyes flicked up to the sky beyond her. For a moment she thought he was rolling them, but then light splashed his face, a weak golden color tinged with rose.

All around them, faces turned to the west.

When she looked for herself, she found that the blanket of even gray above them had frayed at the edge of the sky. The sun was sinking, a small, golden disc partially obscured by clouds.

Conversation stilled. For a few quiet minutes, six thousand souls contemplated the setting sun. Weeks had passed since any of them had seen it, and Sansa felt sure she was not alone in wondering if this was the last time they would.

 _Tonight is the test. Tonight, we reach Moat Cailin or die._

The thin colors painted across the army dimmed and faded as the clouds reclaimed the sun. Sansa felt colder at once. When she looked, Sandor's gaze had not returned to her; he looked straight ahead, chin down. His face was hidden by the heavy cloak she had made for him; she could see the tip of his nose, covered by the scarf, and that was all.

A wildfire field waited for them at Moat Cailin, Arya had told her.

Samwell Tarly had been preparing it for months. When they came to the place where white Stark banners stood sentry on either side of the kingsroad, they were to look for the next pair of banners. No wildfire lay in the direct line between them. When they had ridden through, another set of banners waited. In this way had Sam created a safe, winding path through a deadly, mile-deep trap.

Once they crossed, the trebuchets would launch barrels full of wildfire, and the safe path would close. Then it was only a matter of waiting for the Others and choosing the right moment to set the field ablaze.

If the plan worked, it could potentially destroy a good portion of the Night King's army. If it went wrong, they would very likely perish.

Sansa shivered and drew her cloak more tightly around her as the light failed. She rode into darkness, hoping, for Sandor's sake, that they would not burn.

* * *

The cheese and biscuits were long gone. Though she could have eaten more, she chose not to; she had bothered her horse enough. Besides, she felt it fitting that her last meal—if that's what it had been—was a gift from someone who cared for her.

The sweetness of the biscuits lingered on her tongue for a good long while, though it did not survive her first involuntary nap. She was still an invalid, and her frail body ambushed her with its demand for sleep.

The first time she woke, it was to song. The men were singing "Seven Swords for Seven Sons," their voices rough and wholesome. Warm in her cloak, she smiled. She would have joined them, but her throat still ached, so she contented herself with listening, and soon sleep reclaimed her.

Later, she was aware of a shout of laughter, but she was very tired, and did not fully rouse. Voices floated around her, swapping stories on the long ride, and though they seemed quite loud she did not understand the words, or try to. She felt very comfortable and safe; the laughing, bantering voices meant that she was among friends.

Unnatural quiet woke her, the third time.

The temperature had plummeted. Her breath had frozen in the scarf; it chafed against her face, rigid and scraping. With numb fingers she pulled at it. Eventually she tore it free, and every breath she took of the frigid air seemed to stab into her like a knife. Rewrapping the cloth around her face seemed to take forever, and she colder than ever when it was done.

Around her, the men were silent; not one voice sounded. Shivering in the saddle, she looked around. They were not asleep; she saw the weak torchlight reflected in many pairs of eyes. Sansa felt wrong-footed, as though she had stumbled into the the middle of a conversation she did not understand.

Then she heard for herself the sound that had struck her companions dumb. Sansa looked down, unwillingly.

On the ground, hoarfrost glowed whitely in the dim light. It hissed as it raced along the kingsroad, growing so thick and fast that Sansa was able to mark its progress with her naked eye. The horses' hooves crushed it underneath, but in each print the frost sprang up again, undeterred.

Every hair on her body tried to stand, and she understood that the quiet around her was the silence of fear.

When she took up her waterskin to wet her dry mouth, she found the water had turned to slush. She shook it before drinking an icy mouthful.

"We're close," Arya said, from her right.

A horn sounded the signal for a double time march from the front of the column, where Jon rode. Sansa touched her heels to the horse. It lurched forward, as though surprised to receive an instruction from its rider.

When snow began to fall, dismay churned in Sansa's belly. Glittering powder drifted down from the sky, thin at first. As the minutes passed, it fell thicker, and the visible world shrank. Sansa could see a few horses in front of her, and that was all.

 _The banners._ Riding on the west side of the column, she stared desperately to the right. _Where are the banners?_

The worry inside her was growing, and when the wind picked up and whipped the falling snow into a blinding frenzy, the feeling blossomed into dread. She could hardly see the horse directly in front of her. _We'll never find the path in this._ On the heels of that thought came another, smaller one: _They're coming._ _We're going to die._

The night before she'd imagined herself privy to the feelings of the entire army. Her feverish delusions were gone, but she needed no power to know that every soul riding with her was frightened. _No one could ride through this and not fear._

A hulking, dark shape emerged from the darkness to ride beside her. Sandor had lowered the hood of his cloak, despite the cold, and thrown the edges of it back over his shoulders to free his arms. Oathkeeper lay across his lap, still sheathed, but ready in his grip.

 _Together,_ she reminded herself, trying to push the fear back.

She heard men shouting in front of her, but did not understand the words until Sandor took them up.

"FOLLOW THE KINGSROAD," he roared, turning in the saddle to pass the message back. He repeated the call several times, until those behind them took up the cry themselves.

 _We're going to cross the wildfire. With torches._

One stray fall of burning pitch would end them all. Panic shot through her; she trembled in the saddle as though the Stranger's talons were hooked into her flesh. "Mother have mercy," she whispered. "Warrior give us courage. Father give us justice. Please, Smith, make the torches strong. Mother have mercy…"

A tendril of white mist reached over her shoulder. It curled along the horse's shaggy neck, exploring, and crept forward. Another thread of mist followed, and another. The last thing she saw before the cold haze locked her into a world of solitude was the nearest torch illuminating one of the sentinel Stark banners. It flapped in the wind to her right, the gray direwolf only an indistinct smudge on the ice-encrusted cloth.

 _They are here._

Ahead, the horn howled in defiance.

"RIDE, SANSA," she heard Sandor scream. His horse nearly barrelled into her own, and she caught a glimpse of the horrified whites of his eyes before he smacked Oathkeeper against the rump of her garron.

The horse shot forward, frightened enough to run blind. She clung to the saddle in the near darkness, all prayers but one ripped away. _If we die, Mother let it be quick..._

The air was so cold that the tears streaming from her eyes froze on her skin. Sansa could only remember being this afraid once before. _Ser Ilyn, bring me his head!_ Stifling a terrified sob, she squeezed her legs tighter around the horse.

 _Mother make it quick. For Sandor..._

Her head began to swim as the horse raced across the wildfire she fainted now, she would bit down on her tongue, hard. Hot blood spurted from the wound, coating the inside her mouth with its coppery taste, and the pain cleared the fuzziness in her head.

She turned her head and spat a great gob of blood onto the ground. When she looked forward again, a torch floated in the darkness before her. The rider who carried it a mere length ahead held it high in the air, and Sansa fixed her eyes on the fire that was death and life both. She watched every lick of flame that clung to its burning head with horrified fascination.

 _Please, Smith..._

Afterward, she could not guess how long it took to cross that deadly mile. It could not have been more than a handful of minutes, but her skin crawled the entire time and her breath came shallow and short. Not once did she tear her eyes from the torch, and when the mist thinned, she did not notice for long moments.

In the end, it was more fire that caught her attention. A long line of huge nightfires stretched east and west before her, several hundred yards away. Reeds, Manderlys, and a half-dozen black brothers awaited them there, she knew.

Sansa chanced a look behind her, then wished she had not. The tall bank of fog she had seen once in her dreams roiled and billowed behind her, advancing slowly. She had ridden out of it, but nearly all of the column was still enveloped.

Grimly, she bent in the saddle, the better to let the horse run. Its canter quickly turned into a gallop, and when, at last, they shot between two of the nightfires into safety, she had trouble reining it in.

Around her, mounted men milled. She was just starting to wonder where Jon, Arya, and Sandor were when she heard the horn again, sounding the call to form up. The formation had been planned long ago: a wide, thin line along the nightfires, meant to mop up whatever dead weren't destroyed in the wildfire. Each nightfire had barrels of fresh torches next to it, for wights burned as though they were soaked in oil.

Sansa was no soldier, and while knights and wildlings moved past her, heading for their assigned positions, she turned the garron and let it pick its way over the stony ground toward Jon.

The mass of men around the king broke apart when she approached. Ser Davos Seaworth took up torches and rode back up the kingsroad, the better to direct the troops still streaming out of the fog. Tormund passed her with a smile, heading for his wildlings, and three black brothers moved back from the line to the trebuchets.

Jon met her eyes, but turned at once toward the remaining Night's Watch brother. _He must be Samwell Tarly._ He wasn't as fat as she expected, though he wasn't thin, either.

Sandor joined them, riding from the east, and the relief on his face when he saw her safe drew a weak smile from her. _At least someone's glad I'm alive._ He stopped to speak to Jon, and Arya must have been just behind him, for she rode directly to Sansa. They both turned north, and surveyed the mist.

The horn shrieked again. It was so close to them that she felt the vibrations in her ears. _Form up!_

The white fog still advanced, and the relief Sansa had felt at being out of it faded quickly. Men still poured out of it, five and six abreast, but not even half the column had emerged yet, if Sansa estimated correctly.

The slow clink of heavy chains sliding reached her ears. The speed of the clicking increased, and a few moments later three large, dark objects sailed overhead, punching brief holes into the mist. _Wildfire barrels._

"They aren't going to make it," Arya said, eyeing the fleeing column.

"They might," she insisted. But she knew better; it was already a miracle that none of the torches had dripped death onto the ground below, that any of them had survived at all. The fog was coming too fast, the dead army hidden within, and the column was too long and thin. _Edd Tollett is back there,_ she remembered suddenly, feeling sick.

Men still emerged from the white in a reckless stream. Sansa could see Ser Davos on the kingsroad, waving a torch in each hand. They split around him, some curving east and others west. The mist drew close to him, and when it began to curl around him he dropped the torches and spun his horse, racing back to Jon.

Sansa glanced behind her. The trebuchets had been rewound, and she could see three new objects in the slings, round, dark, and heavy.

Hoping to see a hint of the end of the column, she looked for black clothing on those riding out of the fog, for the Night's Watch made up the tail end of the army. All she saw were the colors of the knights of the Vale, and as the fog inched closer, she began to despair.

Far too quickly, it was upon them. She watched in fascination as a thick tendril of white reached for Jon. His face was grim, and when the fog touched him his mouth worked in disgust.

For the first time, she heard screaming from the north. _They're killing them in there._

"NOW," Jon roared, and the trebuchets launched their deadly cargo. Someone had painted the projectiles with a thin stripe of wildfire; they glowed greenly as they shot through the air.

"Mother have mercy," she whispered. All eyes followed their long arc. They disappeared into the mist, and after a long, still moment Sansa wondered if their fire had somehow been extinguished.

A sound like thunder rolled over her, and the world turned a green so bright she winced against it and closed her eyes.

The screaming was no longer faint; men and horses shrieked together in a chorus of agony. It was the worst thing she had ever heard, and she prayed for it to end

 _Edd,_ she remembered, and a moan escaped her. He'd apologized to her once for the quality of Castle Black's food. He was sweet, and he was burning.

It took a long time for the awful wailing to stop. When it did she opened her eyes just a crack, and held her gloved hand up against the virulent green glare. Above them, the clouds reflected the color of the burning ground.

Sansa looked to her right. Jon and Arya bore the same grim expression, but Sam Tarly's round face was wet with tears. She could see the wildfire reflected there, and looked away.

The mist was gone, vanished as completely as if it had never existed. All along the edge of the burning field, figures lurched toward the nightfires.

 _How many men died for this?_ she wondered, watching the wights approach. She was full to the brim with heartbreak and horror, and thought that even if there had been enough of them to really trouble them, she couldn't possibly fit any more fear into her night.

All around her, men lit torches, and stumbled forward in weary grief to meet the wights. They took their revenge, but it was hollow. The dead were innocent of intent; they were cold flesh and nothing more.

Of the Others, there was no sign.

* * *

A/N: I apologize for the long wait. There will be four more chapters for a total of fifteen, and I would very much like to finish this before S7 airs. If I can keep my act together updates should come a little faster and we will make it to the finish line in good time. Thank you all for reading, and for your kind encouragement with this work. You are lovely!


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